"What do you mean?"
"Never do for a fine chap like him to die young."
"Die? You wouldn't dare."
"It's certain sure we wouldn't dare turn him out in the world again after what's happened."
"Do you mean you'd——"
"Think it over."
And she thought it over while Ezra P. Hipps addressed himself to a liberal helping of saddle of mutton smeared with great dollops of red currant jelly that looked to her like blood.
CHAPTER 25.
MR. BOLT DROPS IN.
An undercurrent of suppressed excitement pulsed through Mrs. Barraclough's household on the day of the seventeenth. You could feel it throbbing like the beat of a distant drum. Voices sounded different, eyes shone strangely, feet touched the ground as though it lacked solidity. A sense of electricity was in the air, like the unnatural calm that is herald to a storm. Mrs. Barraclough herself was the one person outwardly unaffected by the general mood and set about her daily duties as though nothing were happening. She never even mentioned Anthony's name but instead freely discussed the imminent confinement of Mrs. Brassbound, the wife of the village policeman. She loved babies and it struck her as a happy omen that the little arrival was expected on the very day that should mark her son's return from excursions and alarums.