Still Dr Mant stared.  “Look here, Nanjivell.  You’ve a beast of a lump on your leg, and I can certify at once that it unfits you for service.  You couldn’t even crawl up a ladder aboard ship, let alone work a gun.  But the people over at Troy have asked the question; and, what is more, it sticks in my head that, two days ago, I got a letter about you—­an anonymous letter, suggesting that you were just a malingerer, who nursed an ailment rather than go to the War and take your chance with the others.  As a rule I put that kind of letter in the fire, and so I did with this one.  As a rule, also, I put it right out of my head. . . .  But I’ve a conscience, in these times; and if I thought you to be nursing a trouble which I pretty well know to be curable, just to avoid your honest share in this War—­” Dr Mant paused.

“Cuss the War!” said Nicky-Nan wearily.  “It looks to me as if everybody was possessed with it.”

Dr Mant still gazed at him curiously, then whipped about with a sudden “Hey!  What’s that?”

That was the voice of Mrs Penhaligon uplifted without, voluble and frenzied:  and the Doctor hurried forth, Nicky-Nan hobbling after, to find Mrs Penhaligon waving her arms like a windmill’s, and Mrs Polsue, as before the blast of them, flat-backed against the wall of the passage.

“—­And there you’ll stay,” Mrs Penhaligon threatened, “while I teach your proud flesh!  S’pose now I ventured on you, as you’ve been venturin’ on me! S’pose now that, without so much as a visitin’ card, I nosed in on you with—­’So that’s your poor dear husban’s portrait, that you nagged to his grave—­and a speakin’ image of him too, afore he took to the drink as the better way—­An’ what little lux’ries might you have cookin’ in the apparatus, such as a barren woman might reas’nably afford?  Yes, yes—­it must be a great savin’, havin’ no children of your own, but do it warrant pig’s liver an’ bacon of a Saturday?’ Oh, my Gor, I’ll make your two ends meet afore I’ve done with ’ee! I’ll tell ‘ee the savin’ of lard ’pon butter! I’ll tell ‘ee about nettle-broth an’ bread-crumbs for a child’s diet! I’ll—­”

The noise had attracted a group of women to the porchway; among them, Mrs Climoe—­“good at the war-cry,” as Homer says of Diomede.  They huddled forward, obscuring the light.

Mrs Polsue, feeling the wall firm against her back, collected her dignity.  “I wish all respectable people here,” she appealed to Dr Mant, as he came hurrying up the passage, “to take note of this woman’s language.”

“‘Woman?’” panted Mrs Penhaligon.  “No more of a woman than yourself:  and less of a lady, thank God!  Out!  OUT! afore I soil my hands upon ’ee!”

“You would hardly believe, Dr Mant”—­Mrs Polsue addressed him with an air of fine gentility, as the one person present who could understand—­“but I called on this poor body to advise and, if necessary, procure her some addition to her income from the Emergency Fund.”