She made her long upper lip look longer.
"'M, yes. M'say, there's punishing and punishing. There's some ways of caning that's more like petting than anything else. Why, now, didn't you tell me that those two young gentlemen as was dining here the other night wasn't very well? That's Master Roland's doings. They 'ad that bottle of still 'Ock as 'ad been uncorked and corked up again, and Master Roland, 'e thought as it ought to be sparkling 'Ock, and he took and emptied all the Pyretic Saline into it—a new full bottle. What I d'say is, if you spoils a child——"
I left the good Gloucestershire woman to go on with her mumblings unheeded. But now, remembering how she always accused me of spoiling him, I asked myself if I really did so.
Did I really spoil him? If so, it was only a little, and I am glad—glad—glad—knowing as I do what he has had to bear since he went out to the trenches.
He, who had been so shielded, has learned during this past year what it is like to have the brains of a man you knew and cared for spattered all over you as you stand in your trench. He has learned what it feels like to slip and fall on something soft and slime-like on his way to a new trench at night and then to find that he had slid his hand into the decaying body of a long-dead German soldier. He has heard wild screams of women at night from the depths of a wood, and weeks afterwards has come upon murdered nuns lying cold and piteous, seven of them together. When I think of all this I thank God that he has at least a happy childhood to look back upon.
He says in his last letter that he has learnt much and gained much and grown up suddenly and got to know the ways of the world. This has made me curiously uneasy. I have a fear that it may cover up something—some experience that I should not have liked him to go through. And yet—while he can still sign himself Little Yeogh Wough, I know that he is not lost nor utterly spoiled. I know that in spite of the new life and its duties and horrors, there is even yet a good deal of the old life left in him. He is still the "old Roland"; still mine—the boy of my heart.
CHAPTER IV THE BOY'S TREASURES AND OTHER THINGS
I went to look at his room, feeling that it ought to be done up before he comes home.