“I’ll git you some hot tea in a minnut,” said her mother, “and then I’ll tell you a surprise about Ivy.”
“Adone do, mother—you’ve half toald her now.”
“I haven’t—I only said it wur a surprise, which I reckon it aun’t much of, since you’ve near married three men in the last twelvemonth.”
Ivy groaned—“Reckon your tongue’s lik a bruk wurzel-cutter—slipping all over the plaace. Well, Nell, you know it now—but guess who he is.”
This was more difficult, as there were at least half a dozen possible claimants, and Nell restored the secret to a little of its lost glory by guessing wrong several times.
“It’s Eric Staples,” said Ivy at last, “and we’re going out to Canada soon as ever he gits his discharge, which woan’t be long now. He wur wounded and gassed at Vimy, but he’s a stout feller still, and has got a liddle farm in Saskatchewan wot me and him ull kip the two of us. He says I’m the woman born for a colonial’s wife.”
“Reckon you are,” said her mother fondly, “but I wish you cud have got a husband wot took you to hotels and guv you cab-rides and fine hats like Nell.”
“I aun’t the girl fur hotels and cabs—reckon I’m only the girl for washing the pots and scrubbing the floor, and lucky that’s the girl Eric wants. I’d never do wud Nell’s life—she’s a lady...” and she squeezed her sister’s hand.
Nell gave a faint squeeze in response. She was touched by Ivy’s affection, at the same time it made her feel a little cold, for she guessed the reason; Ivy was only saying without words, “I’m standing by you, Nell—you’ve done a stupid thing, and nobody knows it but you and I. Howsumdever you can always come wud any trouble to old Ivy.”
Tea was now on the table, with the remains of the wedding-cake. Mus’ Beatup was asleep upstairs, so it was arranged that later on Nell should take him up his tea and pay him her dutiful greetings. Harry and Zacky came in very grubby after handling roots. Harry was now a pitiless tyrant who drove and slaved his brother out of school hours, making him dig and rake and cart and dung; for the unthinkable thing of a year ago had happened, and the War was dragging on towards Harry’s eighteenth birthday, threatening to move his battle front from the furrows and ditches of Sussex to the blasted fields of France.