In one of the cottage windows, with its little panes of knobby green glass, was the notice, “Tobacco, Eggs, and Ferrets.” In another window were the words, “London Papers; Lending Library; Home-made Jams.” A useful kind of shop! Anyhow, here was a chance of getting an evening paper.
Other people thought so too. A pretty girl, whom Bertram dimly remembered as one of Joyce’s friends—the Vicar’s daughter, perhaps,—rode up on a bicycle, left it against the garden wall, and stepping over the oak cradle, cried out in a merry voice:
“Papers in yet, Mr. Izzard?”
A voice from the cottage answered as cheerily:
“Not a damn one, Miss Heathcote!”
“Well, I’ll wait. I want the latest news about the strike. Is there going to be Civil War, do you think?”
The girl—it was the Vicar’s daughter, as Bertram remembered—asked the question as lightly as she might have enquired about the chance of a shower. As lightly it was answered through the open doorway of the cottage.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Having been a little hero once, I’ve turned Pacifist. No more naughty strife for me! Live and let live is my philosophy.”
“No good hedging like that!” said Miss Heathcote, who was sitting on an iron-bound chest, turning over some old engravings. “ ‘He who is not with me is against me.’ Our wicked Bolshevists will demand allegiance or hang you up to one of your own oak beams.”
“Oh, I’ll sacrifice to the false gods!” said the voice inside. “No martyr stuff for me. Thrice was I wounded in Flanders. . . . Peace! Peace!”