They talked of war, the priest nodding vehemently and punctuating Jim’s brief sentences with exclamations of “Well, well!” The wistfulness dropped from him suddenly; he was a fighting man, a Crusader—with a young man’s burning desire to be out in the trenches, and a young man’s keenness to hear details of battle. “There’s fifty thousand French priests fighting for France,” he said, enviously: “none the worse soldiers for being priests, I’ll vow, and they’ll be all the better priests afterwards for having been soldiers! If I were young! if I were young!” He laughed at his own vehemence. “It’s your day,” he said; “a great world just now for young men. And they tell me there’s any number of them out of khaki yet—standing behind counters and selling lace and ribbons; and some of them doing women’s hair! More shame for the women that let them!”
“If a man wants to stay out of the game and do women’s work, well that’s all he’s fit for,” said Jim, slowly. “He’s not wanted where there’s work going. But he ought to have some sort of a brand put on him, so that people will be able to tell him from a man in future!”
The priest chuckled appreciatively.
“Petticoats are the brand he wants,” said he. “And an extra tax put on him, to support the widows and children of the men who were men—who went and fought to save his worthless hide. ’Tis a shame, now, they wouldn’t make him pay some way. Well, they wouldn’t have me in the trenches—and it’s good sense they have; but for all I’m a broken-down old ruin I’m going fighting—fighting with my tongue against the boys that stay at home. Perhaps they don’t realize—the young ones: they might listen to an old man that was a priest. Just a few days to rest and feel I’m home at last, and I’m going to do my bit as a recruiting sergeant!”
“Good luck!” Jim said, heartily. “Only don’t get knocked up, sir.”
The old man laughed.
“ ’Tis only once a man can die,” he said, cheerfully. “I’d die easier knowing I’d done my bit, as you boys say. But I’m in dread I’ll lose my temper with them, especially if I meet the lads that dress heads of hair! They wash them too, I’m told. Well, well, it’s a queer world!”
Wally came up, faintly indignant at Jim’s lengthy absence, and joined in the talk: and presently Mr. Linton and Norah followed, and made friends with the old man. He was such a simple, cheery old man: it was easy to be friends with him. They grew merry over queer stories from many countries, and often the priest’s laugh rang out like a boy’s, while his own stories brought peals of mirth from his new friends. But through it all his dark eyes kept searching ahead: ever looking, looking till the hills of Ireland should lift from the sea.
“They tell me you have big trees in that Australia of yours,” he said. “Tell me now, are they as big as the Califorian redwoods?”
“I don’t know the redwoods,” Wally answered solemnly. “But ours are big. There’s a story of twelve men who started with axes and cross-cut saws to get a gum-tree down. They worked on one side for nine months and then they got bored with that, and they packed up and made a journey round to the other side. And there they found a party of fifteen men who’d been working at that side for a year, and they were very surprised——” Laughter overcame him suddenly at the sight of the priest’s amazed face.