"Yes. I asked 'em at the War Office what I could do. Get recruits, they told me. I shall mug up a lecture, dealing with military terminology. My people don't know the difference between a brigade and an army-corps. Coming down in the train, I thought out some useful diagrams. And, Mary, unless a miracle happens, the slaughter will be appalling. We must turn our dear old house into a Red Cross Hospital."
"I had thought of that, Geoffrey. We are quite ready."
"Get your staff together, a competent, professional nurse, and the pick of the women in the village."
"Susan Yellam has promised to help."
"None better! The sooner we get to work and stop jawing and fuddling our wits over newspapers, the less miserable we shall be."
"Yes, yes."
After dinner, the autocrat of Nether-Applewhite felt less unhappy.
Upon the following morning, bright and early, Squire and Parson put their heads together at the Vicarage. Since the marriage of Hamlin's daughter to Lionel Pomfret, the somewhat strained relations between the two fathers had pleasantly relaxed. Hamlin had this advantage over the Squire. He could see and understand the autocrat's lordly point of view. The Squire was, and always would be, incapable of standing in the Parson's shoes. Possibly, the war had modified their extreme opinions. The Squire read and approved the leading articles in The Morning Post; the Parson read omnivorously papers and reviews, but he would have admitted candidly that The Westminster Gazette embodied most accurately his ideas and judgments.
Both men were uncomfortably conscious that grave blunders had been perpetrated by Authority.
When they had lit their after-breakfast pipes, Sir Geoffrey laid before Hamlin a synopsis of what he had gleaned in London, and his impressions thereon, but he spoke temperately, perceiving whimsical gleams in his Parson's eyes.