"There's the British fleet, 'm," he observed, with fine scorn. "It was hordered out at the beginning of this so-called war, and told to sink the henemy's fleet. Wot 'ave we 'eard of it since, 'm? Nothing, nothing at all. It's just bluff, 'm; the fleet is out on the 'igh seas for pleasure, junketing at our expense. Doubtless all the gentlemen enjoy a cruise."
"Peter," I say solemnly, "don't you really know that a German submarine sank three British cruisers on the twenty-second of September, the Hague, the Cressy, and the Aboukir? Do you think that the gallant men upon them went to the bottom for pleasure?"
Peter turned a trifle pale under the red of his forehead and cheeks.
"I heard that rumour," he remarked, with an attempt at airy skepticism, "and I dessay you believe it. I dessay you think it actually happened. But I refuse to believe it; when was the British fleet ever defeated?"
There was a tentative something, a touch of question, in the bravado of his denial.
"Peter," I suggest, "our fall gardening is not a national necessity; there is greater need of you elsewhere. Why not be a bomb-sweeper; you like the sea, I believe?" Madge listens, her broom suspended in mid-air, as if it were listening too. A look of embarrassment crosses Peter's face, as he rubs his cheek.
"The bombs are very explosive, I've 'eard, 'm."
"Peter," I say, "if this is an imaginary war, those are imaginary bombs and do not explode."
"I'm not so sure of that, Miss," says Peter shrewdly.
Another British cruiser, the Hawke, sunk October 16. There is wakening fear in the hearts of the English people, and there is deepening courage. The faces that I see here and in the near-by towns, the letters that I get, have one expression. Party differences have almost ceased to exist in the political world, and in other ways, I think, the nation is being welded into one, as it has never been. Even the voice of the Vicar's lady has lost something of its condescension in speaking to common folk; I saw her at the blacksmith's as I took the gingerbread baby home for the eighth time, and she spoke with less of an air of coming down to the level of her audience than I should have believed possible. The gentry are behaving a bit less as if the earth were their private monopoly, and the subgentry, like our Vicaress, are taking the cue.