To his surprise, she laid her strong hands upon his shoulder and kissed him solemnly: demonstrations rare indeed with her, which provoked surprise.
"Why, Mother!"
She said slowly:
"You be all I have, Alferd, and a son to be proud of as never was. I be farseein'. 'Tis a gift o' God. Biding for happiness, in the right Christian spirit, generally brings it, but not allers, not allers."
With a sigh she turned to her daily work, and he went, thoughtfully, to his.
July glided away peacefully. Wars and rumours of wars reached few ears in Nether-Applewhite. The possibility of civil war in Ireland disturbed Mr. Hamlin and provoked to wrath Sir Geoffrey Pomfret; the villagers remained blandly indifferent to anything outside the sphere of their own interests and activities.
With the one exception of Uncle.
Perhaps that old war-horse—for so he deemed himself to be—nosed from afar the coming battles. More than likely, he picked up chance words dropped by Captain Davenant, once a Guardsman, who rented two miles of fishing on the Avon, preserves under Uncle's watchful eye. The Captain predicted war with Germany as inevitable. Uncle, like his wife, could be trusted to repeat what he heard with sundry additions peculiarly his own. In the ale-house, he told his cronies what he knew and much more.
"'Twill be a nice bloody how-dy-do; and it mads me to think that time, as the saying goes, have laid me by the heels. The Kayser be bent on the job, and have been ever since they ancient days, which I recalls right well, when he licked the Frenchies. A rare doin' he give 'em, to be sure."
An old gaffer answered promptly, voicing, unwittingly, the general opinion: