As he made his way across the lawn and through the house, feeling somehow that the whole world had changed for the better, though he could not have told you exactly why, Jervis Blake met Mrs. Otway.
“Won’t you stay and have some tea?” she asked, but she said it in a very different voice from that Rose had used—Rose had meant what she said.
“Thanks very much, but I’ve got to get back. I promised Mrs. Robey I’d be in to tea; the boys are back from school, you know.”
“Oh, yes, of course! I suppose they are. Well, you must come in some other day before you leave Witanbury.”
She hurried through into the garden.
“I hope Jervis Blake hasn’t been here very long, darling,” she said fondly. “Of course I know he’s your friend, and that you’ve always liked him. But I’m afraid he would rather jar on one to-day. He’s always so disliked the Germans! Poor fellow, how he must feel out of it, now that the war he’s always been talking about has actually come!”
“Well, mother, Jervis was right after all. The Germans were preparing for war.”
But Mrs. Otway went on as if she had not heard the interruption. It was a way she had, and sometimes both Rose and old Anna found it rather trying. “This morning Miss Forsyth was saying she thought young Blake would enlist—that she’d enlist if she were in his place! It’s odd what nonsense she sometimes talks.”
Rose remained silent and her mother continued. “I’ve so many things to tell you I hardly know where to begin. It was a very interesting committee, more lively than usual. There seemed a notion among some of the people there that there will be war work of some kind for us to do. Lady Bethune thought so—though I can’t see how the war can affect any of us, here, in Witanbury. But just as we were breaking up, Lady Bethune told us some interesting things. There are, she says, two parties in the Government—one party wants us to send out troops to help Belgium, the other party thinks we ought to be content with letting the fleet help the French. I must say I agree with the Blue Water school.”