He noted a touch of irritation. “All right, Peggy dear,” said he. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Oliver’s here, with his man Chipmunk,” she remarked, her eyes on the road.
“Oliver? On leave again? How has he managed it?”
“You’d better ask him,” she replied tartly. “All I know is that he turned up yesterday, and he’s staying with us. That’s why I don’t want you to ram the fact of your being a Tommy down everybody’s throat.”
He laughed at the queer little social problem that seemed to be worrying her. “I think you’ll find blood is thicker than military etiquette. After all, Oliver’s my first cousin. If he can’t get on with me, he can get out.” To change the conversation, he added after a pause: “The little car’s running splendidly.”
They swept through the familiar old-world streets, which, now that the early frenzy of mobilizing Territorials and training of new armies was over, had resumed more or less their pre-war appearance. The sleepy meadows by the river, once ground into black slush by guns and ammunition waggons and horses, were now green again and idle, and the troops once billeted on the citizens had marched heaven knows whither—many to heaven itself—or whatever Paradise is reserved for the great-hearted English fighting man who has given his life for England. Only here and there a stray soldier on leave, or one of the convalescents from the cottage hospital, struck an incongruous note of war. They drew up at the door of the Deanery under the shadow of the great cathedral.
“Thank God that is out of reach of the Boche,” said Doggie, regarding it with a new sense of its beauty and spiritual significance. “To think of it like Rheims or Arras—I’ve seen Arras—seen a shell burst among the still standing ruins. Oh, Peggy”—he gripped her arm—“you dear people haven’t the remotest conception of what it all is—what France has suffered. Imagine this mass of wonder all one horrible stone pie, without a trace of what it once had been.”
“I suppose we’re jolly lucky,” she replied.
The door was opened by the old butler, who had been on the alert for the arrival.
“You run in,” said Peggy, “I’ll take the car round to the yard.”