After a moment’s silence Mrs Polsue rallied.  “I was saying that this War didn’t surprise me.  The wonder to me is, the Almighty’s wrath hasn’t descended on this nation long before.  He must be more patient than you or me, Charity Oliver; or else more blind, which isn’t to be supposed.  Take Polpier, now.  The tittle-tattle that goes about, as you’ve just been admitting; and the drinking habits amongst the men—­ I saw Zeb Mennear come out his doorway, not fifteen minutes since, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve; and him just about to board the brake and go off to be shot by the Germans!”

“Maybe ‘twas after kissin’ his wife good-bye,” Miss Oliver suggested. “I should!”

“There’s no accounting for tastes, as you say. . . .  But I’ve had good reason to know for some time that they order a supply into the house and drink when nobody is looking.  I’ve seen the boy from the Pilchards deliver a bottle there almost every Saturday. . . .  So, the publics being closed this morning, he can’t help himself but go off with (I dare say) a noggin of Plymouth gin for a stiffener; and might, for all we know, be called to the presence of his Maker with it still inside him.”

“What hurries me,” confessed Miss Oliver, “is the Government’s being so inconsistent.  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,