"My work is never out of hand, Jane," she said fretfully. "I am fairly downhearted to-day—so put to the push as I have been, with women in the kitchen and men in the fields." "Dear mother, it may not be for long." "It will be long enough to bring everything to wrack and ruin. The dairy is twenty-four shillings short this week." "There are perhaps fewer cows in milk." "The wool is short weight also; one of the gray horses is sick; the best thresher has gone soldiering, like the rest of the fools." "Mother!" "And Will Will-be-so has the rheumatism, and in spite of his Bible and his psalm-singing, has been to Dame Yodene for a charm." "Why did he not come to you for flannel and a plaster?" "Come to me! That goes without saying. I went out of my way to help him, and then he wished Master Israel was home, and said ’there was no rheumatics when he was round looking after his men.’ I fired up, then, when he spoke that way—laying to my account the wettings he gets coming from the ale-house at nights; and then he muttered ’Women’s ways—Will-be-so.’" "Will is very provoking. I wish he would go to the wars." "He likes the tap at Widow Tasburgh’s, and the blacksmith’s forge too well—let alone the women in the kitchen, who are all quarreling about him. And then there is this new girl, Susannah, who is more pretty than need be; her face gets her too much favour with the men and too little with the women. When Doctor Verity comes next, I must tell him to give a few words suitable at the Evening Service. They are a lazy, quarreling set, and every one of them does their work against the collar." "Father told me he was led to believe he would not be long away. He said this campaign would be short and fierce, for General Cromwell looks on its necessity as the unpardonable sin in Charles Stuart." "Short and fierce! Well, then, General Cromwell is well able to put fighting men up to that kind of thing." "You are out with the General, mother, and all because you miss father so much." "I am out with the war, Jane. What is the good of it? Charles Stuart alive, stands for his Prerogative just where Charles Stuart dead, did." "The war is now an appeal to God. That is the good of it. You heard what Doctor Verity said of its necessity—and you agreed with him. Indeed, who could gainsay his words? He spoke as if he had heard God’s command ’Up and be doing, and I will help you.’" "Is God, then, the God of war? No, Jane. I will not believe it." "God is the God of blessings, mother; but as the ploughshare breaks up the earth for the corn seed, so does the red ploughshare of war break up the heart of the nation for the blessing of freedom which shall follow it." "I know not; I know not; but I am sure if there were no kings and queens in the world it would be little loss to God Almighty, or to any one else."