“If he’s kind to _you_, that’s enough!” she said, smiling. “But I don’t think he pays much attention to the war, and he never realises the awful sufferings of the men who are fighting for us--”
“Why should he? God bless my soul! Why should a learned and brilliant scholar bother to ‘realise’ what these fighting fools are about? He’s got something else to do--”
“Well, that’s one thing certainly. And I tell you what--ah!--you may look surprised!--but if my ideas were carried out, and language--language, I say!--preserved in refined forms, and no newspaper slang allowed, there would be _no_ wars!--there _couldn’t_ be!”
“Dear Dad, I daresay you are quite right!” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s too late now to preserve what is lost. Elegant speech and graceful manners are very rare.”
“Glad you know it!” and her father made another grimace as his burning toe asserted its existence afresh. “You’ll appreciate my work when you see it!”
“I’m sure I shall!” She hesitated,--then added irrelevantly:
“Best thing he could do! He was always idling about, with no aim in life as far as I could see--one of those stupid young men who want licking into shape!”
She made no reply. Moving quietly about the room she put things tidy and stirred the fire into a more cheerful blaze--then, seeing her father had closed his eyes in preparation for a doze she slipped away. In the outer hall she met the parlour-maid,--generally a trim, tidy little body, but now with roughened hair and swollen eyes, crying bitterly.
“Killed! How awful! Oh, you poor girl! I’m so sorry for you!”
Annie turned away her face and went, still weeping,--comfort there is none in sudden bereavement, and to offer it is only intrusive. The gentle little Sentimentalist felt this to the very core of her responsive soul,--and her usually light step was slow and sad as she entered her own special little sitting-room and looked out on the smooth lawn and the flower-beds encircling it, brilliant just now with goldenrod, dahlias, dwarf sunflowers and other glories of autumnal bloom.
“I’m not in love with him a bit!” she murmured to the silence. “But ... yes!--I’m sure I should almost break my heart if Jack were killed!”
Winter closed in with a drizzling damp atmosphere far more trying to both body and mind than frost and snow, and though the country in November is seldom exhilarating except to fox-hunters and others whose physical activities keep them always “on the go”--the Philosopher found it more agreeable to spend his time in a comfortable old manor house which was kept warm and cosy, than to wander between a London flat and his club in a daily routine walk through the same streets at more or less the same hour. So that when his host urged him to stay “a week or two longer” he was not loth to accept the extended invitation; and if any twinge of shame pricked his conscience at the barefaced manner in which he allowed himself to be lodged and fed at other folks’ expense, he salved it with the inward assurance that after all was said and done, the old gentleman was gouty and ailing and that a companion of his own sex was a good thing for him.