As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with a letter from Derby. Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look at the address.
“Give it here, blind eye!” exclaimed her son, snatching it away from her.
She started, and almost boxed his ears.
“It’s from your son Arthur,” he said.
“What now——!” cried Mrs. Morel.
“ ‘My dearest Mother,’ Paul read, “ ‘I don’t know what made me such a fool. I want you to come and fetch me back from here. I came with Jack Bredon yesterday, instead of going to work, and enlisted. He said he was sick of wearing the seat of a stool out, and, like the idiot you know I am, I came away with him.
‘I have taken the King’s shilling, but perhaps if you came for me they would let me go back with you. I was a fool when I did it. I don’t want to be in the army. My dear mother, I am nothing but a trouble to you. But if you get me out of this, I promise I will have more sense and consideration. . . .’ ”
Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair.
“Well, now,” she cried, “let him stop!”
“Yes,” said Paul, “let him stop.”
There was silence. The mother sat with her hands folded in her apron, her face set, thinking.
“If I’m not sick!” she cried suddenly. “Sick!”
“Now,” said Paul, beginning to frown, “you’re not going to worry your soul out about this, do you hear.”
“I suppose I’m to take it as a blessing,” she flashed, turning on her son.
“You’re not going to mount it up to a tragedy, so there,” he retorted.
“The fool!—the young fool!” she cried.
“He’ll look well in uniform,” said Paul irritatingly.
His mother turned on him like a fury.
“Oh, will he!” she cried. “Not in my eyes!”
“He should get in a cavalry regiment; he’ll have the time of his life, and will look an awful swell.”
“Swell!—swell!—a mighty swell indeed!—a common soldier!”
“Well,” said Paul, “what am I but a common clerk?”
“A good deal, my boy!” cried his mother, stung.
“What?”
“At any rate, a man, and not a thing in a red coat.”
“I shouldn’t mind being in a red coat—or dark blue, that
