MRS. PERKINS—AND OTHERS.
IHESITATED as I got to the cottage gate. Everything looked so peaceful and lovely on this autumn afternoon that one could hardly realize the pain and sorrow that were gripping so many homes (rich and poor) in our beloved England. I hesitated, because I knew that Mrs. Perkins bad both her sons out fighting, and the casualty lists had been woefully heavy the last few days; but my doubts were dis- pelled by Mrs. Perkins herself coming to welcome me down the garden path.
" Well, now, I'm main glad to see you. I've just had a letter from Charlie, and he wants me to thank you for the parcel you sent him. He is pleased with the cards and the cake. He says he was fair olemmed, for a bit o' home cake. Now come in, do, though I ain't fit to see company. I work in the fields now; it'll put a bit by 'gainst the boys come home." I walked up the path behind Mrs. Perkins's homely figure. Rotund always, it looked none tide less so for a huge sacking apron tied round her ample waist. Our friendship was of old standing, but I had never realized her true worth until the August of last year, when with a courage beyond praise she sent her two only sons to do their duty ; sent them heartened by a mother's blessing and an enthusiasm as great as any in the land. The younger, a strapping boy of, seventeen, cheerfully swore he was nineteen, and in those early days of stress was not questioned too closely, When I went to see her soon after they Lad gone, I offered my little word of sympathy and admiration. " Me sad P." she said. " You know how I love them boys, but I'd be. 'shamed to keep 'em. I wish I oould send me daughters tool" I wondered whether the daughters held the same views I Seated in the cottage, it hardly seemed possible that Mrs. Perkins was really finding time to work in the fields. Every- thing shone with the polishing of years .of labour. The winking cheerfulness of the copper kettle made me glad that its destiny was not to add to the Germans' growing need. The red-brick floor was so speekiess that I felt it vandalism to rest my dusty shoes on it. Mrs. Perkins's girls were all, I knew, out in service, but it seems to me that the busier you are the more time there is to do things, and lest a moment should be lost she knitted while we talked. "Did Will get the parcel you were doing up the other day P" I asked. "No," said Mrs- Perkins; "it was a pity. Most everything he asked for I put in that parcel, and with you giving me the cigarettes it was a help, and then he never got it. A shilling for the postage, no matter how small the parcel, comes ratherhard on us, 'specially if they don't get 'emi But I 'wants to go on sending while I've got 'em to send to. Poor Jack Clegg's killed, I hear. He used to live in the Green Lane too, and always played with Charlie and Will, and it do bring it home so. His poor old mother's gone to the Union. Not but what there wasn't enough for her; there was, and we'd all have helped; but her mind's gone soft like with the svorriting, and there was no one to see to her. A good thing poor Jack can't hoar of it "—and a tear slowly trickled down due of the furrows in Mrs. Perkins's dear old face, only to be caught with the back of an impatient hand and sent about its busi- ness. " Tears is for them as holds with 'em," was a saying beloved of Mrs. P. Half an hour's chat with Mrs. Perkins did me more good than many sermons, and I left her that afternoon cheered in spite of myself, and feeling that I, too, should get my husband home in God's good time, and if not? —well, I felt that the "if not " must not be thought of until the time came. "No good a-climbing stiles till you come to 'ern," was another Perkinsonian motto.
My next visit was to Mrs. Rayburn, next door, and _here I hesitated, too, though certainly not for the same reasons, Mrs. Rayburn had four sons, two eligible for service, and big, strong men. Neither had enlisted, and when I had talked to her, she had told me that nothing would persuade her to let her sons go, "they had been so well brought up and were in such good places." I had kept my temper, for which I felt I had earned much praise, and had talked and argued until I was exhausted, all to no purpose. To-day I had hardly got inside the cottage when Mrs. Rayburn asked me whether I could find a place for her boy of sixteen, now at home idle. I at once thought of our sadly diminished farm staff and offered him a job there. "Oh no," Mrs. Rayburn said; "the boy doesn't. fancy farming at all" I pointed out the daily of country boys working on farms in this year of stress; but all to no purpose. He wanted to get on to a gentleman's place in the gardens " where eight or ten were kept." I siiently vowed that no help of mine would put him there; and her closing argument—" You see, neither Rayburn nor me would like to see him on a farm; it isn't the sort of work any of our family would care to do "—added fuel to the fire, and my walk home was filled with bitter reflections on tbe unfairness of our present system. So many women give their all, only to be faced with the women who live at home with no anxieties and with smug sons comfortably enjoying the fruits of their raised wages and war bonus. And though vindictiveness and bitter- ness towards our neighbours ought to be far from us in these days, yet I longed for a Zeppelin to drop a bomb very near to the Rayburn family and startle them out of their selfish case; or, better still, for the organized net of National Service to sweep them in and force them to be men. E.
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