“Yes; he was the first to open your baby eyes.”
“Well, there’s no whitewash here.”
“Wrong again. Whitewash and eyewash. A full dose yesterday.”
Upon the previous afternoon, the Wilverley Court Red Cross Hospital had been inspected by a medical Panjandrum. Wards and passages had been swept and garnished with nauseating haste and diligence. A great house, already in fine working order, had been scrubbed from basement to attics. The tired scrubbers had presented smiling faces and spotless uniforms to the cold stare of red-tabbed Authority. After his departure they had retired—foundered!
“What’s the use of that?” asked Tiddy. “Why can’t these pestering old duffers take us unawares, and find out how things really are? We should have gloried in that test. At Harborough we played the same rotten game. For half-an-hour the place was as it ought to have been. Next day we went back to the old disorder and dirt. However, we women are going to change all that.”
“Changes are so upsetting, Tiddy.”
“I repeat—knock or be knocked. Really, you privileged people can’t complain; you’ve had a wonderful innings. But this war has bowled you out.”
“Mother would have a fit if she heard you,” remarked Cicely.
IV
Afterwards, long afterwards, Cicely could not recall with any exactness when she began to look at Upworthy with eyes from which the scales had fallen. Presently she beheld the beloved cottages through Miss Tiddle’s twinkling orbs. Little escaped them. Called upon to admire thatched roofs and walls brilliantly white against a background of emerald-green fields, Tiddy perpetrated sniffs.