"Ah-h-h! You've settled the affair, have 'ee?"
"Yes. 'Tis a boy—another Alfred. Ain't you glad?"
"I be ready to welcome any babe, boy or girl, as belongs to Alferd—and you."
Solomon, dreaming blissfully of rats, woke up and wagged his tail.
CHAPTER XV
LEANNESS OF SOUL
Life meandered on in the village. Mrs. Yellam spent her mornings at Pomfret Court; Fancy took her place in the afternoon; they were together during the light-lengthening evenings. By this happy arrangement, two women, not of the same temperament, never saw too much of each other. They met at supper, glad to exchange the mild gossip of the day. And, always, after uneasy matutinal hours, Fancy felt a renewed zest in life, an appetite for work amongst the "boys," and a delightful consciousness that physical strength—heretofore lacking—was slowly coming to fortify a frail body against the still far-off ordeal. She learnt much from Mrs. Yellam, and said so with flattering reiteration. Mrs. Yellam may have learnt more from her, but she did not say so. That, perhaps, constituted the essential difference between them. Fancy's thoughts and ideas bubbled out of her mind, effervescent, like water from a chalybeate spring. Mrs. Yellam had suppressed her intimate thoughts since childhood. What she said, indeed, masked her real feelings, conveying to others an impression of shrewdness, cocksureness and unruffled calm. It would be grossly unfair to speak of this as a pose. Since girlhood, she had been shrewd, sure of herself, and calm. Now, when she was past sixty, these comfortable and admirable attributes deserted her. She judged herself quite as severely as she judged her neighbours. She knew that, inwardly, she was questioning her wisdom, her cherished convictions, and her unruffled deportment.
"I be a whited sepulchre," she told Solomon.
Nevertheless, during these Spring days, when May was dancing in the woods and across the fields, rest and refreshment fell upon Mrs. Yellam's perplexed mind. By sheer force of will, for her own sake and for Fancy's sake, she called "Pax" to introspection, and, like a schoolboy, almost believed that the kindliest dew from heaven had fallen upon her. During this month, too, Alfred happened to be out of the danger zone, busy with new drafts who had not yet been under fire. And everybody in Nether-Applewhite predicted that the war must end soon because sheer exhaustion, military and economic, affected so tremendously the belligerents. Upon this cheval de bataille Sir Geoffrey Pomfret rode over all obstacles. Old Captain Davenant bestrode just such another charger. Uncle, you may be sure, ran with them, throwing his tongue, speaking to a breast-high scent.
"We be nigh the end on't," he told his cronies. "They Proosians be more fed up wi' mud and blood than us. I talks of what I knows. The slaughter o' they Huns be so fearsome that Kayser Bill be a-thinkin' night and day o' polligammy."