It closes the public-houses on a six-days' licence
and then goes and declares War on the very day the magistrates have
taken the trouble to hallow." She shook her head. "I may be
mistaken--Heaven send that I am!--but I can't see on any Christian
principles how a nation can look to prosper that declares war on a
Sabbath. If it's been coming this long while; as everybody seems to
say now; why couldn't we have waited until the clocks had finished
striking twelve to-night--or else done it yesterday, if there was all
that hurry?"

"The Battle of Waterloo was fought on a Sunday," Mrs Polsue put in.
"I've often heard my great uncle Robert mention it as a remarkable
fact."

"Then you may be sure the French began it, with their Continental
ideas of Sunday observance. I suppose we mustn't speak ill of the
French, now that we're allies with them. But I couldn't, when I
heard the news, help fearing that our King and his Cabinet had been
led away by them in this matter: and once you begin tampering with
the Lord's Day--" Miss Oliver shivered. "We shall have the shops
open next, I shouldn't wonder."

"You are right about the Battle of Waterloo," said Mrs Polsue.
"My great-uncle Robert was always positive that the French began it.
He had that on the best authority. The Duke of Wellington, he said,
had no choice but to resist: and it must have gone all the more
against the grain because he was distantly connected with John
Wesley, only for some reason or another they spelt their names
differently. My great-uncle, in the room that he called his study,
had two engravings, one on each side of the chimney-piece. One was
John Wesley, when quite a child, being rescued from a burning house,
with his father right in the foreground giving thanks to God in the
old-fashioned knee-breeches that were then worn. The other
represented the Duke of Wellington in a similar frame on his famous
charger Copenhagen and in the act of saying in his racy way,
'Up, Guards, and at 'em!' My great-uncle would often point to these
two pictures and spell out the names for us as children,
'W-e-s-l-e-y' and 'W-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-y,' he would say.
'What different destinies the Almighty can spell into the same word
by sticking a few letters in the middle!'"

"It's to be wished we had more men of that stamp in these days,"
sighed Miss Oliver. "I should feel safer."

"I hear Lord Kitchener well spoken of," said her friend guardedly.
"But I think we go too