Part 16 (1/2)

”Somebody, I don't know who,” she said, ”told me that there was an English navy. Probably it was all lies like the German atrocities.”

Edith threw her hands wide.

”Do you think I like feeling as I do?” she asked. ”Do you think I do it for fun?”

”No, dear, for my amus.e.m.e.nt,” said Dodo briskly. ”But unfortunately it only makes me sick. Hullo, here's David.”

David entered making an awful noise on a drum.

”Shut up, David,” said his mother, ”and tell Edith what you are going to do when you're eighteen.”

”Kill the Huns,” chanted David. ”Mayn't I play my drum any more, mummy?”

”Yes, go and play it all over the house. And sing Tipperary all the time.”

David made a shrill departure.

”Of course you can teach any child that!” said Edith.

”I know. That's so lovely. If I had fifty children I should teach it to them all. I wish I had. I should love seeing them all go out to France, and I should squirm as each of them went. I should like to dig up the graves of Bach and Brahms and Beethoven and Wagner and Goethe, and stamp on their remains. They have nothing to do with it all but they're Huns.

I don't care whether it is logical or Christian or anything else, but that's the way to win the war. And you're largely responsible for that; I never saw red before you talked such nonsense about the war being over. If we haven't got an army we're going to have one, and I shall learn to drive a motor. If I could go to that window and be shot, provided one of those beastly Huns was shot too, I should give you one kiss, darling, to shew I forgave you, and go to the window dancing! I quite allow that if everybody was like you we should lose, but thank G.o.d we're not.”

Dodo's face was crimson with pure patriotism.

”I'm not angry with you,” she said, ”I'm only telling you what you don't know, and what I do know, so don't resent it, because I haven't the slightest intention of quarrelling with you, and it takes two to make a quarrel. You know about trombones and C flat, and if you told me about C flat----”

Edith suddenly burst into a howl of laughter.

”Or C sharp,” said Dodo, ”or a harpsichord. Oh, don't laugh. What have I said?”

Edith recovered by degrees and wiped her eyes.

”In all my life I have never had so many offensive things said to me,”

she remarked, ”I can't think why I don't mind.”

”Oh, because you know I love you,” said Dodo with conviction.

”I suppose so. But there's Berts going out to that h.e.l.l----”

”Oh, but you said the war was over already,” said Dodo. ”Besides what would you think of him if he didn't go?”

”I should think it extremely sensible of him,” began Edith in a great hurry.

”And after you had thought that!” suggested Dodo.

Edith considered this.

”I don't know what I should think next,” she said. ”What I'm going to do next is to get back to my scoring.”

Edith's remarks about the absurdity of people attempting to do things for which they had no apt.i.tude made a distinct impression on Dodo, and she totally abandoned the stocking of which she could not turn the heel, and made no further dislocation of work by trying to use a mop. But she found that if she really attended, she could count blankets and bed-jackets, and weigh out stores and superintend their distribution.