"Is Mrs. Yellam ill?"
"No, sir."
Hamlin guessed what had happened.
"No news is good news, Fancy."
"That's what the men say, sir. It ain't a mort of comfort to us women."
She looked very white, with dark, heavy lines beneath her eyes. Hamlin said a few encouraging words to which she listened attentively, nodding her head. Hamlin felt reassured. Fancy was unhappy, but she didn't despair. Before she left the study, she said slowly:
"I believe as Alfred will come back."
To the solicitude and sympathy of neighbours Mrs. Yellam exhibited a frigid indifference.
"I be just as well as never was," she remarked, when they enquired after her own health. "Time enough for such as me to fall sick if my Alferd don't come back."
No further news had reached her. To Jane Mucklow, now the village optimist, with George at home on leave for Christmas, Mrs. Yellam spoke with some bitterness. Jane meant well; her sympathy was sincere, but how could she, so high in Divine favour, understand? Nothing could shake Susan's conviction that Alfred lay somewhere in France, mortally wounded, whilst William Saint, the hypocrite and rascal, knelt among the Communicants. To kneel with him, feeling as she did, would be, in her opinion, an act of sacrilege. She reflected miserably that, since confirmation, she had never missed a Christmas Celebration of the Eucharist.