n the boiler, an' how to stoke it.
There's folks," said Mr Latter delicately, "as can't stoke hot tea
upon sossiges: an' likewise there's folks as'll put forth their best
on three goes o' whisky. So why not live an' let live?"

"They say," answered Mrs Polsue, "that the Czar has been advised to
prohibit the sale of vodka throughout his vast dominion."

"What's the beverage, ma'am? I don't seem to know it."

"Vodka."

"Oh, well: very likely he has his reasons. . . . It sounds a long way
off."

"But that," Mrs Polsue persisted, reproducing what she had
assimilated from her newspaper,--"_that_ is what folks in Polpier
cannot be made to understand. At this moment the Germans are nearer
than we are to London, as the crow flies; and here are our working
classes living on honey and roses, like a City of the Plain.
What are our young men thinking about?"

"Why, ma'am," said Mr Latter, by this time busy with the cask,
"they're takin' it slow, I'll own, an' they don't say much. To begin
with, 'tis their natur'; an' next, 'tis a bit more they risk than you
or me, if I may make bold to say so. Then there's the mothers an'
sweethearts pullin' 'em back."

"Tut! If _I_ had a sweetheart--"

"Oh, certainly, ma'am!" agreed Mr Latter. "That if wars there had
been, you'd have driven him to the nearest, I make no doubt at all;
though your departed--if I may make so bold--was never the sort to
hurt a fly. . . . Though, by God," wound up Mr Latter in an inaudible
murmur as he blew the sawdust from the vent-hole, "the man must have
had pluck, too, in his way!"

"There's worse bein' done by Polpier women than holding the men back.
_I_ call it worse, at any rate, to send your wedded husband off to
fight for his country and then pick up with another man for
protection."

"Can such goin's-on go on in our midst, ma'am, and nothing about in
the shape o' fire and brimstone?"

"I am not retailing gossip, Mr Latter. I tell you no more than was
openly said to me, and brazenly, before witnesses, by one of the
parties involved. As one of the Relief Committee appointed to see
that none of our reservists' families are suffering want, I called
the other day upon Samuel Penhaligon's wife. From the first the
woman showed no sense of our respective positions; and after a
question or two she became so violent that it drew quite a small
crowd around the door. In the midst of her tirading out steps her
partner--"

"What? Sam?"

"How