oke off blushing
furiously, to find every one listening to her. "I didn't mean to make a
speech."

"It's quite true, though," said her father, "even if you did make a
speech about it. There were privations in some cases, no doubt--invalids
sometimes suffered, or men used to a heavy meat diet, whose wives had
not knowledge--or fuel--enough to cook substitutes properly. On the
other hand, there was no unemployment, and the poor were better fed than
they had ever been, since every one could make good wages at munitions.
The death rate among civilians was very much lower than usual. People
learned to eat less, and not to waste--and the pre-war waste in England
was terrific. And I say--and I think we all say--that anyone who
grumbles about 'privations' in England deserves to know what real war
means--as the women of Belgium know it."

He stopped, and Norah regarded him with great pride, since his remarks
were usually strictly limited to the fewest possible words.

"Well, it's rather refreshing to hear you talk," remarked another
squatter. "A good many people have come back telling most pathetic tales
of all they had to endure. I suppose, though, that some were worse off
than you?"

"Oh, certainly," David Linton said. "We knew one Australian, an
officer's wife, who was stranded in a remote corner of South Wales
with two servants and two babies; it was just at the time of greatest
scarcity before compulsory rationing began, when most of the food
coming in was kept in the big towns and the Midlands. That woman could
certainly get milk for her youngsters; but for three months the only
foods she and her maids were sure of getting were war bread, potatoes,
haricot beans and salt herrings. She was a good way from the nearest
town, and there was deep snow most of the time. There was no carting out
to her place, and by the time she could get into the town most of the
food shops would be empty."

"And if you saw the salt herrings!" said Norah. "They come down from
Scotland, packed thousands in a barrel. They're about the length and
thickness of a comb, and if you soak them for a day in warm water and
then boil them, you can begin to think about them as a possible food.
But Mrs. Burton and her maids ate them for three months. She didn't seem
to think she had anything to grumble about--in fact, she said she still
felt friendly towards potatoes, but she hoped she'd never see a herring
or a bean again!"

"She had her own troubles