The days drew in, and the Setons settled down for the winter. James Seton occupied himself for several hours in the day writing a history of the district, and found it a great interest. He said little about the war, and told his daughter he had prayed for grace to hold his peace; but he was a comforter to the people round when the war touched their homes.
Elizabeth was determined that she would have busy days. She became the Visitor for the district for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association; she sang at war-concerts; she amused her father and Buff; she knitted socks and wrote letters. She went to Glasgow as often as she could be spared to visit her friends in the Gorbals, and came back laden with tales for her father—tales that made him laugh with tears in his eyes, for it was "tragical mirth."
To mothers who lost their sons she was a welcome visitor. They never felt her out of place, or an embarrassment, this tall golden-haired creature, as she sat on a wooden chair by the kitchen fire and listened and understood and cried with them. They brought out their pitiful treasures for her—the half-finished letter that had been found in "Jimmy's" pocket when death overtook him, the few French coins, the picture-postcard of his wee sister—and she held them tenderly and reverently while they told the tale of their grief.
"Oh! ma wee Jimmie," one poor mother lamented to her. "Little did I think I wud never see him again. The nicht he gaed awa' he had to be at the station at nine o'clock, and he said nane o' us were to gang wi' him. I hed an awfu' guid supper for him, for I thinks to masel', 'It's no' likely the laddie'll ever see a dacent meal in France,' an' he likit it rare weel. An' syne he lookit at the time, an' he says, 'I'll awa' then,' an' I juist turned kinda seeck-like when he said it. He said guid-bye to the lasses an' wee John, but he never said guid-bye to me. Na. He was a sic a man, ye ken, an' he didna want to greet—eighteen he was, ma wee bairn. I tell't the ithers to keep back, an' I gaed oot efter him to the stair-heid. He stood on the top step, an' he lookit at me, 'S'long, then, Mither,' he says. An' he gaed doon twa-three steps, an' he stoppit again, an' 'S'long, Mither,' he says. Syne he got to the turn o' the stair, an' he stood an' lookit as if he juist cudna gang—I can see him noo, wi' his Glengarry bunnet cockit that gallant on his heid—and he cried, 'S'long, Mither,' an' he ran doon the stair—ma wee laddie."
It was astonishing to Elizabeth how quickly the women became quite at home with those foreign places with the strange outlandish names that swallowed up their men.
"Ay," one woman told her (this was later), "I sent oot a plum-puddin' in a cloth to ma son Jake—I sent twa o' them, an' I said to him that wan o' them was for Dan'l Scott—his mither was a neebor o' mine an' a dacent wumman an' she's deid—an' Jake wasna near Dan'l at the time, but the first chance he got he tuk the puddin' an' he rum'led a' roond Gally Polly until he fand him—and then they made a nicht o't."
Evidently, in her mind "Gally Polly" was a jovial sort of place, rather like Argyle Street on a Saturday night. As Elizabeth told her father, Glasgow people gave a homely, cosy feeling to any part of the world they went to—even to the blasted, shell-strewn fields of Flanders and Gallipoli.
The winter wore on, and Arthur Townshend got his commission and went to France.
Elizabeth sent him a parcel every week, and the whole household contributed to it. Marget baked cakes, Mrs. Laidlaw made treacle-toffee, Mr. Seton sent books, Buff painted pictures, and Elizabeth put in everything she could think of. But much though he appreciated the parcels he liked the letters more.
In November she wrote to him: "We have heard this morning that Alan's regiment has landed in France. He thinks he may get a few days' leave, perhaps next month. It would be joyful if he were home for Christmas.