"Well," she said, "at least you won't deny that it says in the New Testament that you are to love your enemies!"
"I don't yike the New Test'ment," commented Toady Lion in his shrill high pipe, which cuts through all other conversation as easily as a sharp knife cleaves a bar of soap; "ain't never nobody killed dead in the New Test'ment!"
"Hush, Arthur George," said Prissy in a shocked voice, "you must not speak like that about the New Testament. It says 'Love your enemies!' 'Do good to them that hate you!' Now then!"
Hugh John turned away with a disgusted look on his face.
"Oh," he said, "of course, if you were to go on like that, there would never be any soldiers, nor bloody wars, nor nothing nice!"
Which of course would be absurd.
During this discussion the two Generals of Division had been wholly silent. To them the New Testament was considerably outside the sphere of practical politics. Peter Greg indeed had one which he had got from his mother on his birthday with his name on the first page; and Mike, who was of the contrary persuasion as to the advisability of circulating the Written Word in the vulgar tongue, could always provoke a fight by threatening to burn it, to which Peter Greg invariably replied by a hasty and ungenerous expression of hope as to the future welfare of the head of the Catholic religion.
But all this was purely academical discussion. Neither of them knew nor cared one jot about the matter. Prissy alone was genuinely distressed, and so affected was she that two big tears of woe trickled down her cheeks. These she wiped off with her pinafore, turning away her eyes so that Hugh John might not see them. There was, however, no great danger of this, for that warrior preoccupied himself with shouting "Right-left, Right-left," as if he were materially assisting the success of the expedition by doing so.