Melia nodded. Should she tell him that Coggins had that morning refused to supply anything else until the last delivery of potatoes, bananas and tomatoes had been paid for? Pride said no, but a force more elemental than pride had hold of her now. "Owe him six pound, I see. What does he let you have in the way of credit?" "He won't let me have anything else until I've paid his account," said the reluctant Melia. "And he says it's all got to be cash for the future." "When did he say that?" "He's just been up to see me." "Can you pay him?" "I promised him two pounds by Saturday." Josiah made no comment. Once more his eyes made the tour of the shop. And then he said with the slow grunt that Melia knew so well: "Very creditable to your man to join up ... if he sticks it." The four last little words were almost sinister. And then in the unceremonious way in which he had entered the shop the great man walked out. The place was as distasteful to him as his presence in it was distasteful to his eldest daughter. Yet for both, and in spite of themselves, their meeting after long years had had an extraordinary grim fascination. XIX At Christmas Private Hollis was granted forty-eight hours' leave. He had been a member of the Blackhampton Battalion rather less than three months, but this was a piece of luck for which he felt very grateful. Those three months had been a grueling time. His age was forty-one, and, in order to comply with the arbitrary limit of thirty-eight imposed by Field Marshal Viscount Partington in the first days of strife, it had been necessary to falsify his age. Many another had done likewise. Questions were not asked, and if a man had physical soundness and the standards of measurement demanded by the noble Viscount there seemed no particular reason why they should be. All the same the sudden and severe change from a soft life found some weak places in Private Hollis. How he stuck it he hardly knew. Many a time in those trying early weeks he was sorely tempted to go sick with "a pain in his hair." But ever at the back of his mind hovered the august shade of Troop Sergeant Major William Hollis, the distinguished kinsman who had fought at Waterloo, whose spurs and sword hung in the little back sitting room of Number Five, Love Lane; and that old warrior simply would not countenance any such proceeding. Therefore, Christmas week arrived without Private Hollis having missed a single parade. Although not one of the bright boys of the Battalion, he was not looked upon unfavorably, and on Christmas Eve, about four o'clock, he returned to his home from the neighboring town of Duckingfield.