“There’s a talegram for yu, Mist Bowden,” he said, and vanished.
“What’s that?” said Bowden dully, and passed in under the porch.
The ‘talegram’ lay unopened on the kitchen table, and Bowden stared at it. Very few such missives had come his way, perhaps not half a dozen in his fifty odd years. He took it up, handling it rather as he might have handled a fowl that would peck, and broke it open with his thumb.
“Greatly regret inform you your son killed in action on seventh instant. War Office.”
He read it through again and again, before he sat down heavily, dropping it on the table. His round solid face looked still and blind, its mouth just a little open. The girl Pansy came up and stood beside him.
“Here!” he said, “read that.”
The girl read it and put her hands up to her ears.
“That idn’ no yuse,” he said, with surprising quickness.
The girl’s pale face crimsoned; she uttered a little wail and ran from the room.
In the whitewashed kitchen the only moving things were the clock’s swinging pendulum and old Mrs. Bowden’s restless eyes, close to the geranium on the window-sill, where the last of the sunlight fell before passing behind the house. Minute after minute ticked away before Bowden made a movement—his head bowed, his shoulders rounded, his knees apart. Then he got up.