"You go and see that old grammer. 'Twill cost 'ee sixpence. For a shillin' she'll tell 'ee a fine fortin, marry 'ee to a young lord, and make 'ee the mother o' nine children. I ha' no patience wi' such tricks." Fancy said humbly: "Alfred thinks it foolishness, just as you do, but ..." "Well?" "The lady in Salisbury, as taught me, did say that I should marry a soldier. Alfred laughed at that, till--till he became one." "You bain't married to a soldier yet." "No. That's true." Fancy sighed. Mrs. Yellam went on with some knitting. Suddenly, she said sharply: "What did they cards say?" Fancy smiled faintly. "They said that Alfred would come back--soon." Mrs. Yellam knitted on. After a long pause, she pronounced a verdict. "I bain't one to talk about what I don't understand. If so be as Alfred comes back soon, and if he marries 'ee, I may own up that cards do tell truth sometimes." CHAPTER XII THE EMPTY PEW After her Alfred went to the front, Mrs. Yellam's interest in the Tommies who had been "over the top" became more acute. She listened to everything said, regardless of a timely caution from Lionel Pomfret, who, before he rejoined his battalion, warned her that Mr. Atkins, with all his glorious qualities, was not too scrupulous a respecter of the truth. When the wounded men fell to talking amongst themselves, or before sympathetic females, the hypercritical might have noted a valiant determination on the part of each speaker to go "one better" than his predecessor. And the essential fact that these boys, most of them under twenty-five years of age, laughed at and chaffed each other when relating horrors merely piled Pelion upon Ossa in the mind of Mrs. Yellam. It seemed to her--and to how many more mothers?--that none could escape death or mutilation. One man was dumb from shell-shock. A "Black Maria" had buried him and ten others. He alone survived, unable to tell in speech what he had undergone. Mrs. Yellam paid this man particular attention, because her imagination was lively enough to realise what loss of speech would mean to herself. She told Jane Mucklow, with portentous shakings of the head, that the poor lad had lost his tongue for evermore. What else could be expected? Jane, now in happier mood, remarked sententiously that miracles still happened. Mrs. Yellam smiled grimly, wondering whether Jane was thinking of what George had done and accounted that achievement a miracle. And Jane could afford to take a rosy view of life, inasmuch as Adam was still in England, and George, with a view to stimulating recruiting, had been given a snug billet at the dépôt of his regiment. All the credit due to George had, by this time, been assumed by Uncle. He not only took part, as has been said, in the heart-thrilling exploit, but assured everybody that the valour of his son had been begotten in him by a sire known far and wide to be without fear, the Bayard of the countryside! Jane accepted this hypothesis with creditable derision.