About a fortnight later an impudent-looking little girl with a big mouth came wobbling up Worge drive on a bicycle, and from a wallet extracted a telegram which she handed to Zacky, who sat on the doorstep peeling a stick. Zacky ran with it to his mother, who refused to open it.

“I’ll have no truck with telegrams—they’re bad things. Fetch your faather.”

Zacky ran off in great excitement, and soon Mus’ Beatup came lumbering in, very red after planting potatoes.

“Wot’s all this, mother?—another of those hemmed telegrams?”

[128]

“Yes, and I reckon Tom’s killed this time.”

“Can’t be—we only got a letter last night.”

“Ivy says they taake four days to come over. He may have bin killed this mornun—got a shell in his stomach lik Viner’s poor young boy.”

“Maybe it’s to say he’s coming hoame,” said Zacky.

“Shurrup!” growled his father.

He tore the envelope, with a queer twitching of the corners of his mouth.

“He aun’t killed,” he said shakily—“only wounded.”

A moan came from the mother’s parted lips, and she closed her eyes.

“Maybe it’s naun very tar’ble,” continued the father. “They said ‘serious’ in Mus’ Viner’s telegram; here it’s only—‘regret to inform you that Private Beatup has been wounded in action.’”

“Will they let me go to him?”

“Aun’t likely—he’s over in France.”

Mrs. Beatup did not cry, but all the colour went from her face and her lips were strangely blue. Then suddenly her head fell over the back of the chair.

“Zacky!” shouted Mus’ Beatup—“fetch the whisky bottle that’s in the pocket of my oald co............