Free Village Centenary by Miss Read

dressed, and had a pretty lacy shawl round her shoulders.
    'Isobel had to go out,' she told me. 'She is giving a talk over at Springbourne and 1 wouldn't let her put it off. Really, I'm quite rested now after two nights and one whole day in bed.'
    She certainly looked very well, though as thin as ever, but her eyes were bright and 1 think she was enjoying the company of the Annetts.
    'They are so kind,' she went on. 'And the more I know of them the more I am reminded of my early teaching days when Mr and Mrs Hope looked after me so well.'
    'Was that the headmaster who had to leave Fairacre?'
    Miss Clare nodded sadly. 'He was a gentle soul, and very musical like the Annetts, but they lost their only child when she was twelve or so, and he never got over it. He took to the bottle, you know, and left soon after the Great War in 1919, if I remember rightly.'
    'You remember the war well enough,' 1 said.
    'Too well,' she said. 'Not only because I lost my dear Arnold in France, but because of the appalling number of young men from here who never came back. One of the saddest sights in Fairacre School was the black armbands worn by so many of the children. And the tears! You would see some little mite busy writing, and then the pen would stop, and the head would go down and the crying begin. It was dreadful to feel so helpless in the face of such sorrow. Mr Hope felt it all terribly. Sometimes I wonder if that was another reason for his taking to drink.'
    'He didn't drink in school?'
    'No, thank goodness! He made up for it at home, and was simply morose and befuddled in school towards the end. He still worked hard though, and did a great deal to help the war effort, and saw that the children helped too. Why, I remember that even the youngest babies were set to fraying pieces of white cotton and linen with a darning needle to make field dressings. And of course we all put as much as we could spare - which wasn't much, in those days - into War Savings stamps.'
    'But at least you were spared bombings and rushing into air-raid shelters in that war.'
    'We saw practically nothing of the war in Fairacre,' agreed Miss Clare, 'and I think, despite the horror stories in the newspapers, that there was less real hatred towards the Germans. We prayed every morning for the war to end, and I daresay we realised that German children were doing the same. We
disliked
them, of course, and
intensely
and I remember Mr Hope taking a grammar lesson at the other end of the classroom. He was trying to get the children to stop using the word "got" - with small success, as you might imagine. He wrote it on the blackboard, and crossed it through. "Got, got, got," he cried. "A horrible word! It must be German! Simply leave it out, and say: 'I
have
a pen! I
have
a new nib!' Understand?" And one of the Bryant boys, a real little gipsy said: "I ain't got neither, sir!" and everyone broke into laughter, including Mr Hope.'
    'He sounds a good chap,' I said. 'A pity he had to leave.'
    'A tragedy,' agreed Dolly. 'He was as much a casualty of war as my dear Arnold.'
    She fingered the gold locket which hung under the lacy shawl. She wore it constantly, and I knew that it contained a photograph of the red-haired young man who had shared the fate of thousands of others whose names were written upon country memorials, and in the hearts of those who loved them.

    'Heard the latest?' enquired Mr Willet the next morning. 'About the vicar?'
    Elevated to rural dean? Broken a leg? Off on holiday? All these dramatic possibilities leapt to mind before Mr Willet spoke again.
    'He's going to keep
bees.
I only hope he knows what he's letting himself in for. My old gran had three of those straw skep hives on an old table by her bottom hedge, and by gum, you didn't dare go near 'em to scythe the grass or pick a few runner beans nearby. Fair vicious they was.'
    'I expect he's gone into all that.'
    'I doubt it. Mr Mawne's been eggin' him on, and got him a couple of hives from some chap