By the time Mus’ Beatup had groped his stumbling way from Hailsham to Sunday Street, the anxieties of Worge about Ivy were at an end. A letter had come during the morning and was flapped in his face. He was not sober enough to read it, nor yet too drunk to have it read to him.

    “8 Bozzum Square,

    “Hastings.

    “Dear Mother,—I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at present. I got fed up as the boys say and came here. Do you remember Ellen Apps and her folk lived at the Fowl Mile up the Hollowbones. She is here working on the trams, I heard from Jen, so thought I go and ask her. She says I will get a job in a day or 2 with my strong physic, so do not worry about me, I am with Ellen and hope to start work next week. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close. Fondest love from

    “Your loving daughter, Ivy.”  

[190]

“I toald you as she’d never gone wud Seagrim!” cried Mrs. Beatup.

“Umph,” grunted her husband—“but she’s gone on the trams, which is next bad to it. Now if she’d gone maaking munititions....”

“Trams is better than munititions.”

“No it aun’t. Fine ladies and duchesses maake munititions, but I never saw a duchess driving a tram.”

“Ivy ull never drive a tram—she’d be killed, surelye.”

“Best thing she cud do for herself now she’s disgraced us all—a darter of mine on the trams, a good yeoman’s darter on the trams ... ’tis shameful.”

“But ’tis honest, Maaster—better nor if she’d run away wud a man.”

“Maybe—but ’tis shameful honest. I’m shut of her!”

“Oh, Ned!—our girl!”

“Your girl!”

“You cruel, unnatural faather!”

“Adone do, and taake off my boots.”

The matter ended temporarily in sniffs and grunts, but when Mus’ Beatup woke out of the sleep which followed the removal of his boots, he reviewed it more auspiciously. After all, working on the trams was better than working in the fields—suppose Ivy had gone and offered her robust services to some neighbouring farmer, to some twopenny smallholder perhaps, then the yeoman name of Beatup would have indeed been trampled into the earth. Now trams were town work, trams were war work, trams were engineering. In time “my darter on the trams” began to sound nearly as well as “my son at the front.”

So a letter was written in which Ivy’s choice was deplored, though not condemned. She was invited to come home, or if obstinate on that point, to turn her [191] attention to the more aristocratic “munititions,” but if it must be trams, then trams it should be unreproached.

Ivy wrote back in a few days, saying that she had “joined up” and enclosing a photograph of herself in uniform. She would soon be earning thirty shillings a week, and had taken a room of her own in Bozzum Square. Her family had now quite forgiven her, especially as they found the neighbourhood inclined to applaud rather than to despise Beatup’s daughter on the trams. Her mother would have liked her home, but Ivy was quite firm about sticking to her job. “I&rsqu............