Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3825/The Khaki Muffler
The blinds were drawn, the lamps were lit and the fire was burning brightly. I was reading an evening paper—we get the 5.30 edition at the moment of publication, though we are thirty miles from London—and I had just found Prezymyzle (my own pronunciation) on the map for the thousandth time. Helen says that quite in the early days of the war she was told it ought to be pronounced Perimeeshy, but that seems impossible. Rosie declares for Prozmeel. Still she isn't very confident about it. One thing seems certain: when the Russians take this jaw-cracking town they will pronounce it quite differently from the Austrian form, whatever that may be. Just think of what happened to Lemberg. There appeared to be a kind of finality about that, but no sooner were the Russians in it than it turned into Lwow. After that anything might happen to Przemysl.
However, there were the three of us sitting in the library. I was helping the common cause with the evening paper and the map, and Helen and Rosie were knitting away like mad at khaki mufflers for Lady French. Click-click went the needles; the youthful fingers moved with incredible deftness and celerity, and line after line was added by each executant to her already enormous pile. There had been a long silence, and the time for breaking it seemed to have come.
"Well done, both of you," I said. "You really are getting on to-day. A week ago I thought you'd never get finished, and now———" I waved my hand encouragingly at the two heaps of wool-work.
"There," said Helen, "you've made me drop one."
"Pick it up again," I said with enthusiasm. "What were girls made for if not to pick up dropped stitches? But tell me," I added, "what would happen if you didn't pick it up?"
"My soldier," said Helen gloomily, "would go into the trenches and, instead of having a muffler, he would suddenly find himself coming undone all over him. Do you think he would like that?"
"No," I said, "he wouldn't. No soldier could possibly like a thing of that sort when he's got to fight Germans."
"I wonder," put in Rosie, "what my soldier will be like. I think I should like him to have a moustache—yes, I'm sure I want him to have a moustache."
"He'll have a moustache all right," said Helen, who is practical rather than dreamy. "And he'll have whiskers, too, and a beard as long as your arm. Do you think people have time to shave when they're in trenches?"
"Well, anyhow," said Rosie, "both our soldiers will be very brave men."
"That," said Helen, "is quite certain. Let's put in some good hard stitches to thank them for their bravery."
There was a short silence while this operation was performed with great zeal. The fingers flew through their complicated task and the web seemed to grow visibly.
"Haven't you both," I said, "done about enough? Talk about mufflers! In my day a muffler was something a man wore round his neck; but your mufflers would serve to clothe a whole platoon from head to heel with something left over. Benevolence is all very well, but you shouldn't overdo it. There isn't a soldier alive who wouldn't trip over your mufflers. Think of him tripped up by a muffler and caught by a German."
"Lady French," said Helen, "wrote in her letter to The Times that every muffler was to be two yards and a half long and twelve inches broad."
"Well," I said, "you've got the breadth all right."
"Yes," said Helen, "we got that in the first line, and we've never let go of it since. Anybody could get the breadth. You could do that if you tried."
"Graceless child," I said, "you don't seem to be aware that in my earliest boyhood I once began to knit a sock."
"But you didn't finish it," said Helen. "I know that story."
"Fathers," said Rosie, "could knit very well if they tried, but they won't try."
"Come," I said, "I won't compete with you in knitting, but I'm game to bet you've done seven feet six inches in length already."
"All right," said Helen, "we'll bet a penny. Only remember, mine was only six feet yesterday and Rosin's was four inches shorter."
I spread the fabrics on the floor and set to work with a tape measure. The first result was, Helen five feet eleven inches; Rosie five feet six inches.
"This," I said, "is maddening. You are imitating Penelope."
"I don't know about Penelope," said Helen, "but you haven't straightened them out enough."
I smoothed them out carefully and measured again. This time the result was, Helen six feet two inches; Rosie five feet ten inches.
"Capital!" I said; "I will do some more smoothing."
"No," said Helen, "that won't he fair to Lady French or our soldiers. We must give them an inch or so over, if anything;" and they picked up the unfinished mufflers and set to work at them with renewed energy.
*****
This was four days ago. Now both the mufflers are gloriously finished and ready to be despatched. When our two soldiers wear them we hope they will feel that there is a little magic in them as well as a great deal of warmth. There is love knitted into them and admiration and gratitude, and there are quiet thoughts of beautiful English country-sides and happy homes which our soldiers are helping to guard for us, though they are far away.