“You’ll have heard from her lately, I suppose?” Mrs. James asked elegantly, the present belle of the village inquiring politely after her predecessor. Mrs. James was married, of course, but she was the belle, nevertheless; not to speak of the splendid enhancement of having been taken for Lady Thorpe. “Nay, I haven’t,” Mrs. Clapham answered, without turning her head. “I haven’t heard for a while. But she’s been making a gown for Miss Marigold’s trousseau, so she’s sure to have been throng. It’s Miss Marigold’s wedding-day to-day, you’ll think on, and a grand one an’ all!” “Same age as your Tibbie, isn’t she?” asked Mrs. Dunn; and added, by way of making up for her late slip, “But nowhere near her when it comes to looks!” “Nay, now, Miss Marigold’s right enough; she’d pass in a crowd!”... Mrs. Clapham was flattered, but she wished to be just. “Let’s hope she hasn’t been through the wood that often, though, she’s had to pick t’ crooked stick at last!” she went on chuckling. “My Tibbie took t’ bull by t’ horns, and picked crooked stick right off!” This evoked a perfect volley of reproach from the shocked Chorus, put finally into intelligible form by Mrs. Tanner. “Nay, now, Ann Clapham, you should think shame to be talking like that! ’Tisn’t right to Poor Stephen, seeing he turned out so grand. Doesn’t seem right to your Tibbie, neither, as lost her man in t’ war.” Mrs. Clapham looked slightly conscience-stricken. “Ay, poor lad—poor lass!” she sighed, by way of amends, and suddenly the shadow of the terrible four years came out of the corners in which it had been dispersed, and breathed a vapour as of shell-smoke over the sunny street. Before the minds of all rose a succession of khaki figures, coming and going; or only going, and getting ever further away. Young Mrs. James, whose husband had been off to Gallipoli before they were three months wed, looked at that moment not such a very young Mrs. James, after all. The sisters, Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn, drew together and touched hands. Mrs. Airey’s lad had come back, and Mrs. Dunn’s had not, but even Mrs. Dunn’s flattened mind could have told you that the real agony of war is in the suspense and not in the blow. The mental horizon of all stretched itself again, demanding that strained, painful vision which had looked so long towards India, Salonika, Palestine and France. They felt again that atmosphere which is like no other on earth—that mixture of bewilderment and intense interest, terror and exaltation, utter helplessness and secret pride. And, sighing, they sighed as one, chiefly with relief, but also with an unconscious regret for the heady wine of drama that had once been poured into the white glass vials of their colourless lives. “Stephen wasn’t much to crack on when he was here,” Mrs. Tanner continued, “I’ll give you that; but he was a good lad, all the same. Ay, and need to be, too, or he’d have murdered yon mother of his long before!”