Mary Postgate - Page 2

laughter. At crises, which multiplied as he grew older, she was his
ambassadress and his interpretress to Miss Fowler, who had no large
sympathy with the young; a vote in his interest at the councils on his
future; his sewing-woman, strictly accountable for mislaid boots and
garments; always his butt and his slave.

And when he decided to become a solicitor, and had entered an office in
London; when his greeting had changed from 'Hullo, Postey, you old
beast,' to Mornin', Packthread,' there came a war which, unlike all wars
that Mary could remember, did not stay decently outside England and in
the newspapers, but intruded on the lives of people whom she knew. As
she said to Miss Fowler, it was 'most vexatious.' It took the Rector's
son who was going into business with his elder brother; it took the
Colonel's nephew on the eve of fruit-farming in Canada; it took Mrs.
Grant's son who, his mother said, was devoted to the ministry; and, very
early indeed, it took Wynn Fowler, who announced on a postcard that he
had joined the Flying Corps and wanted a cardigan waistcoat.

'He must go, and he must have the waistcoat,' said Miss Fowler. So Mary
got the proper-sized needles and wool, while Miss Fowler told the men of
her establishment--two gardeners and an odd man, aged sixty--that those
who could join the Army had better do so. The gardeners left. Cheape,
the odd man, stayed on, and was promoted to the gardener's cottage. The
cook, scorning to be limited in luxuries, also left, after a spirited
scene with Miss Fowler, and took the housemaid with her. Miss Fowler
gazetted Nellie, Cheape's seventeen-year-old daughter, to the vacant
post; Mrs. Cheape to the rank of cook, with occasional cleaning bouts;
and the reduced establishment moved forward smoothly.

Wynn demanded an increase in his allowance. Miss Fowler, who always
looked facts in the face, said, 'He must have it. The chances are he
won't live long to draw it, and if three hundred makes him happy--'

Wynn was grateful, and came over, in his tight-buttoned uniform, to say
so. His training centre was not thirty miles away, and his talk was so
technical that it had to be explained by charts of the various types of
machines. He gave Mary such a chart.

'And you'd better study it, Postey,' he said. 'You'll be seeing a lot of
'em soon.' So Mary studied the chart, but when Wynn next arrived to
swell and exalt himself before his womenfolk, she failed badly in
cross-examination, and he rated her as in the old days.

'You _look_ more or less like a human being,' he said in his new Service
voice. 'You _must_ have had a brain at some time in your past. What have
you done with it? Where d'you keep it? A sheep would know more than you
do, Postey.