“The Vicar allows no animals inside the crypt.  So hard on Mrs. Perry’s canary which has fits.  I was here once when the Vicar’s youngest son brought in a rabbit under his coat.  A dretful scene, my dear.”

That district of London happened to be rather a courageous one.  The inhabitants felt that if the War had to be brought home to them, common politeness dictated that it should find them at home.  There were not more than a dozen people in the crypt therefore.  Most of them were old ladies from the district’s less respectable quarter, knitting.  The Vicar was trying to press comfort upon them, but without much success, for they were all quite content, discussing the deaths in their families.

The noise of gunfire was coming nearer, shaking the ground like the uneven tread of a drunken giant.  Sarah Brown concentrated on an evening newspaper, busily reading again and again one of those columns of confidential man-to-man advertisement, which everybody reads with avidity while determining the more never to buy the article advertised.  But presently the fidgeting hands of Richard caught her eye, and she looked at him.  He was sitting next to his mother on a stone step.  He seemed to be in a quieter mood and attempted no manifestation.  Sarah Brown thought he was suppressing excitement, however, and indeed he presently said:  “I say, won’t it be fun lying about all this to posterity and Americans, and other defenceless innocents.”

Opposite to them, on two campstools, sat a young bridling mother of fifty, with her old hard daughter of sixteen or so.  Hard was that daughter in every way; you would have counted her age in winters, not in summers, so obviously untender were her years.  An iron plait of hair lay for about six inches down her spine; her feet and ankles made the campstool on which she sat, looking pathetically ethereal.  Of such stuff as this is the backbone of England made, which is perhaps why the backbone of England sometimes seems so sadly inflexible.

There was a screeching noise outside, followed by an incredible crash.  It seemed to cleave a bottomless abyss between one second and the next, so that one seemed to be conscious for the first time in an astonished and astonishing world.

Lady Arabel said:  “Boys will be boys, of course I know, but really this is going a little too far.  Pinehurst’s one hobby was his windows.”

The campstooled mother gave a luxurious little shriek as soon as the crash was safely over.  “The villains,” she said kittenishly.  “Aiming at places of worship as usual.  I am absolutely paralysed with terror.  Mary, darling, I don’t believe you turned a hair.”

“Pas un cheval,” replied her firm daughter, in not unnatural error.  One could easily see that she was beloved at home, and one wondered why.

The sound of the guns seemed only a negative form of sound after the bomb, and clearly above the firing could be heard a howl.  The Vicar’s dog, still howling, ran into the crypt.