Walter said we must cut down expenses, and put all possible money into War Loan. It was the least we could do, he said. So Eleanor’s nurse was dismissed. I would look after Eleanor myself; I was glad to do something definite, and enjoyed looking after my baby for a time.
It was a wet summer; from all sides came complaints of the floods; crops ruined, cattle drowned, people suffering already from the strain and anxiety of war longed in vain for sunshine and kindly weather.
‘It is the guns,’ they said, ‘the big guns cause the rain.’
Rachel was coming now. I tried to look forward to her as I had to Eleanor, but I could not. I thought again and again:
‘How shall I manage two children, who am so pressed with one?’
Eleanor would wake up early in the morning; she would talk and jump and keep us both awake, and she was getting very heavy to push in her perambulator. By the end of the day I was very tired. When she was in bed I could not think or read; I would drop down on the sofa and wait for Walter to come home.
I thought:
‘It cannot go on much longer now; it is bound to end very soon.’
XIII
In October Walter volunteered under the Derby scheme. He told me before he went out that he should not be taken.