AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM BELOW
Magic is a disconcerting travelling companion. While seldom actually
conspicuous, it seems to have a mysterious and varying effect on the
surrounding public. I have met travellers by Tube who tell of strange
doings in those regions, when the conductor of one compartment fell
suddenly in love with the conductress of the next, and they ran to each
other and met in the middle of the car. As nobody opened the gates or
rang the bells, the bewildered train stood for hours at Mornington
Crescent before any member of the watching public could find the heart
to interrupt the pretty scene. It is patent that a magic person must
have been the more or less deliberate cause of this episode. Then again,
there is the story of the 'bus that went mad, just as it was leaving its
burrow at Dalston. It got the idea that the kindly public was its
enemy. You should have seen the astonishment of Liverpool Street and
the Bank as it rushed by them. Old ladies about to ask it whether it
went to Clapham--its label said it was bound for Barnes--stood aghast,
and their questions died on their lips. Policemen put up their hands
against it,--it ran over them. It even learned the trick of avoiding the
nimble business man by a cunning little skid just as he thought he had
caught it. You will hardly believe me, but that 'bus ran seven times
round Trafalgar Square, until the lions' tails twisted for giddiness,
and Nelson reeled where he stood. I don't know where it went to that
day, certainly not to Barnes, but late in the evening it burst into
another 'bus's burrow at Tooting, its sides heaving, its tyres worn to
the quick, its windows streaming with perspiration, and a great bruise
on its forehead where a chance bomb had struck it. I believe the poor
thing had to be put out of its misery in the end. And what was the
reason of all this? It was found that a wizard, called Innocent, of
Stoke Newington, had been asleep on the top all the time, having
forgotten to alight the night before, on his return from the City.
Sarah Brown, on the night of Lady Arabel's supper party, was unaware of
the risk she ran in entering a public conveyance in company with a
witch. But she was spared to a merciful extent, for nothing happened on
any of the 'buses they boarded, except that, as they crossed the Canal,
a cloud of sea-gulls swooped and swirled into the 'bus, resting awhile
on the passengers' willing shoulders before disappearing again. Also the
passengers on the Baker Street stretch sang part-songs, all the way down
to Selfridge's. The conductor turned out to have rather a pleasing tenor
voice.
The witch and Sarah Brown knocked at the Higgins' door five minutes
before supper-time. Lady Arabel herself opened it.
"My dears, isn't it too dretful. All our servants are gone. It's an
extraordinary thing, they never can stand Rrchud and his ways."
The tactful Sarah Brown nudged the witch. "Better not stay," she
murmured.
"Of course we'll stay," replied the witch loudly. "I'm horribly hungry,
and there's sure to be some supper."
"Certainly there is," added Lady Arabel. "I cooked it myself. Do you
know, I've never seen a cookery book before, and the little pictures of
animals with the names of joints written all over them shocked me
dretfully. I feel I could have a too deliciously intimate conversation
with a bullock now."
The house of Higgins had an enormous hall to which a large number of
high windows gave the impression of a squint. I should think two small
Zeppelins could have danced a minuet under its dome. Sarah Brown and the
witch put on their cathedral look at once, by mistake, and propping
their chins upon their umbrellas gazed reverently upward.
"Too dretful, a house of this size without servants," said Lady Arabel.
"The fourth footman was the last to go. He said even the Army would be
better than this. He liked spooks, he said, at second hand, but not
otherwise. Too funny how people take dear Rrchud seriously. I'm glad to
say the orchestra has stayed with us. Come into Rrchud's study, won't
you, while I just go and help the first violin to dish up the soup."
Sarah Brown and the witch were left in a small room that opened on to
the great hall. It was furnished rather like a lodging-house parlour.
There was a thermometer elaborately disguised as a model of the
Eddystone Lighthouse on the mantelpiece, flanked on each side by a china
boot in pink, with real bootlaces, and a pig looking out of the top of
each. There were pictures on the walls, mostly representing young
ladies, more or less obviously in love, supported by rustic properties.
I have noticed that the girl's first love is the monopoly of the
Victorian painter, whereas the boy's is that of the novelist, but I do
not know the reason of this.
There was a slight clap of thunder and Richard entered. He would have
been very obviously a wizard even without the thunder, and seemed much
less innocent about his magic than the witch. He had pale hair, a pale
face, and eyes that did not open wide without a certain effort on the
part of the brows.
"You are despising my ornaments," he said to Sarah Brown. "I admire them
awfully. I don't like really clever art. Do you know, it makes me
sneeze."
Directly he spoke, one saw that he was making the usual effort of magic
to appear real. Witches and wizards lead difficult lives because they
have no ancestry working within them to prompt them in the little
details. Whenever you see a person being unusually grown-up, suspect
them of magic. You can always notice witches and wizards, for instance,
after eight o'clock at night, pretending that they are not proud of
sitting up late. It is all nonsense about witches being night birds;
they often fly about at night, indeed, but only because they are like
permanent children gloriously escaped for ever from their Nanas.
"This picture," added Richard, "seems to me very beautiful." The picture
might have cost a shilling originally, framed, or it might have been
attached to a calendar once. It was a landscape so thick in colouring
and so lightless that it failed to give an outdoor impression at all.
There was a river and waterfall like well-combed hair in the middle, and
a dozen leaden mountains lying about
with--apparently--pocket-handkerchiefs on their tops, and a
dropsical-looking stag drinking. "I can't imagine," insisted Richard,
"that there could be a more beautiful picture than that, but perhaps it
appeals to me specially because father and mother and I so often talk
about the place together--the place like that, near to the mountain
where I was born. That was in the Rockies, you know, and just below our
mountain I am sure there was a canyon like that--I dream of it--with
milky-green water running under and over and round the most
extraordinary shapes of ice, and cactuses like green hedgehogs in the
crevices of the rocks, and great untidy pine-trees clinging to an ounce
of earth on an inch of flat surface. And the rocks are a most splendid
rose-red, and lie in steep layers, and break out into shapes that are so
deliberate, they look as if they must mean something. Indeed they
do...."
A stave played by a 'cello called them to supper, and, as they returned
to the hall, a burst of earnest music from the whole orchestra partially
drowned the clap of thunder that again marked Richard's passage through
the door. Sarah Brown felt sure that Lady Arabel arranged this on
purpose. The wizard's mother obviously had great difficulty in not
noticing the phenomena connected with her son, and she wore a striving
smile and a look of glassy and well-bred unconsciousness whenever
anything magic happened.
At the end of the hall the orchestra, arranged neatly in a crescent, was
busily employing its violins in a unanimous melody of so rude and
destructive a nature that it seemed as if every string must be broken.
This mania spread until even the outlying bassoons, triangles, and
celestas were infected. A piercing note of command, however, from a
clarinet caused a devastating dumbness to fall suddenly on every
instrument except the piano, which continued self-consciously alone. The
pianist looked at the ceiling mostly, but one note seemed to be an
especial favourite with him, and whenever he played it he looked closely
and paternally at it, almost indeed applying his nose to it. All at
once, just as Sarah Brown was beginning to imagine that she could catch
the tune and the time, the music ceased, apparently in the middle of a
bar. Richard sneezed once or twice. That unsophisticated wizard was
evidently enjoying himself in the practice of his art. One felt that
magic was not encouraged in the Army, and that the supernatural orgy in
which he was now indulging was the accumulated reaction after long
self-control. Strange noises of unnatural laughter, for instance,
proceeded from distant corners of the hall, and each of the electric
lights in turn winked facetiously. The string of the double bass broke
loudly, and the new string which its devotee laboriously inserted also
broke at once. The performer looked appealingly at Lady Arabel, but she
refrained from meeting his eye. A blizzard of butterflies enveloped the
table. This was evidently rather a difficult trick, for the spell
collapsed repeatedly, and from one second to another Sarah Brown was
never quite sure whether there were really Purple Admirals drowning in
her soup or not.
"You are so lucky," sighed the witch, "plenty of room and every
facility. I myself am so dreadfully cramped and hampered. I often have
to boil my incantations over a spirit lamp, and even that is becoming
difficult--no methylated."
"Not really lucky," said Richard. "In France the smallest pinch of magic
seems to make the N.C.O. sick, and that's why I never got my stripe. To
keep my hand in, I once did a little stunt with the sergeant's
cigarette: it grew suddenly longer as he struck a match to light it, and
went on growing till he had to ask me to light it for him, and then it
shrank up and burnt his nose. Of course he couldn't really bring the
thing home to me, but somehow--well, as I say, I never got my stripe."
To this discussion, and indeed to all the enchantments, Lady Arabel paid
no attention, but continued to talk a little nervously on very insipid
subjects. Her eyes had the pathetic look often seen in stupid people's
eyes, the "Don't-listen-to-me" look, "I am not saying what I should like
to say. The real Me is better than this."
Finally Richard indulged in a trick that was evidently a stock joke
among magic people, for the witch laughed directly it began. Just as the
hostess, with poised fork and spoon, was about to distribute the
whitebait, the round table began to spin, and the whitebait were whisked
away from her. The table continued to spin for a moment, with a deep
thrilling organ sound, and when it stopped, the whitebait were found to
have assembled opposite to Richard's place. He distributed them gravely.
Lady Arabel turned scarlet, and murmured to Sarah Brown: "So dretfully
ingenious, and so merry."
Sarah Brown took pity on her, and began talking at random. The orchestra
was busy again, and to the tune of a loud elusive rag-time, she shouted:
"Do you know, I gave my job the sack this morning. I shall be on the
brink of starvation in three and a half days' time. That's counting a
box of Oxo Cubes I have by me. You don't happen to know of a suitable
job. I can't cook, and if I sew a button on it comes off quicker than if
I hadn't. But I once learnt to play the big drum."
"My dear," said Lady Arabel, instantly motherly. "How too dretful. I
wish I knew of something suitable. But--war-time you know,--I'm afraid I
shan't be justified in keeping on the orchestra, certainly not in adding
to it. Besides, of course, although women are simply too splendid
nowadays, don't you think the big drum--just a wee bit unwomanly, my
dear. However----"
"Are you clever?" asked Richard.
"Yes, she is," said the witch proudly. "She writes Minor Poetry. I saw a
bit by her in a magazine that had no pictures,--the bit of poetry was
between an article on Tariff Reform and a statement of the Coal
Situation, and it began 'Oh my beloved....' I thought it was a very
beautiful bit of Minor Poetry, but somehow I couldn't make it fit in
with the two articles. That worried me a little."
"If you'd try your best not to be clever I'd give you a job," said
Richard, who with a rather tiresome persistence was now levitating the
chicken, so that, invisibly suspended at a height of eighteen inches
above the middle of the table, it dripped gravy into a bowl of
daffodils. "In fact I will give you a job. I have a farm called Higgins
Farm, just about half-way between sea-level and sky-level. You can be a
Hand, if you like, at sixpence an hour. You can get there from Mitten
Island every day quite easily, and I'll tell you how. It's just the
other side of the Parish of Faery, on your right as you reach the
mainland from Mitten Island. You follow the Green Ride through the
Enchanted Forest, until you come to the Castle where the Youngest
Prince--who rescued one of the Fetherstonhaugh girls from a giant and
married her--used to live. The Castle's to let now; she is an ambulance
driver in Salonika, and he a gunner--just got his battery, I believe.
Below the outer wall of the Castle you will see the Daisified Path, and
that leads you straight to the gate of Higgins Farm, under a clipped box
archway."
"I haven't got a land outfit," said Sarah Brown. "But I saw a pair
called Mesopotamian Officer's Model, with laces and real white buckskin
collision mats between the knees, that would fit me, and I can pawn
my----"
At that moment there was a loud report. Every one looked at the double
bass, but all his strings were for the moment intact.
"A maroon," said the witch.
"My dears," exclaimed Lady Arabel, much relieved to hear that this new
sensation was not supernatural. "How too dretfully tahsome with the
sweet and the savoury still to come. Do you know, I promised
Pinehurst--my husband--never to remain in this house during an air-raid.
It was his own fault, the dear thing; he had a craze for windows; this
house has more glass space than wall, I think, and Pinehurst, in his
spare time, used always to be making plans for squeezing in more
windows. Our room is like a conservatory--so dretfully embarrassing. So
I always take my knitting across the road to the crypt of St.
Sebastian's, and I'm sure you won't mind coming too. You might have
brought a box of spellicans, or a set of table croquet, but I'm afraid
the Vicar wouldn't like it. A nice man but dretfully particular. We must
wait for the end of this piece, the first violin is so touchy."
They all waited patiently while the piece continued. It was a plain
uneventful piece, composed by a Higgins relative and therefore admired
in the household.
"A thing that puzzles me," said the witch, taking advantage of an
emotional pause while one violin was wheezing a very long small note by
itself, "is why only ugly songs are really persistent. Haven't you
noticed, for instance, that a peacock, or a cat on the wall, or a baby
with a tin trumpet, will give their services most generously for hours
on end, while a robin on a snowy tree, or a nightingale, or a fairy----"
She was interrupted by a scuffling sound in the umbrella-stand, and
Harold the Broomstick, after a moment's rather embarrassing entanglement
with a butterfly net, approached, panting.
"I must go," said the witch. "I bet you twopence we shall have some fun
to-night. Sarah Brown, I'll come back and fetch you when it's all
over."
Lady Arabel and Sarah Brown crossed the road to the church, Richard
following a few yards behind.
"I'm afraid my little dinner-party wasn't a great success," said Lady
Arabel confidentially. "Rrchud and Angela didn't get that good talk on
occult subjects as Meta Ford said they would. Of course Rrchud, as you
noticed, was dretfully restless and lighthearted; all boys are like that
for the first few hours of their leave. He is naturally of a quiet
disposition, though you wouldn't think it from to-night."
There was a distant blot of gunfire on the air, just as they reached the
door of the crypt. The very stout dog of the Vicar (are not all reverend
dogs fat?) was waiting there with a bored look.
"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.
"RUPERT!" said the Vicar, in a terrible voice, interrupting himself in
the middle of a cheering platitude. But he had no time to say anything
more, for behind Rupert came a procession of perhaps a dozen people, all
dressed in sheets. Everybody saw at one pitiful glance that these were
unfortunate householders, so suddenly roused from oblivion as to forget
all their ordinary suburban dignity, probably barely escaping from
ruined homes with their lives and a sheet each. There was a very old
man, a middle-aged spinster, and then an enormous group of children of
ages varying from two months to twenty years, followed by their parents,
teachers, or guardians.
A nearer gun began to fire, and one of the old ladies on the other side
of the crypt suddenly threw down her knitting and began confessing her
sins. "Ow, I shall go to 'ell," she shouted dramatically. "I bin sich a
wicked ol' woman. I nearly done in me first ol' man by biffin' the
chopper at 'is nob, and Lawd, the lies I bin an' tol' me second only
yesterday."
"This is indeed a solemn moment," said the sheeted spinster sitting down
beside Lady Arabel. "I hope I am meeting it in a proper spirit, but of
course one is still only human, and naturally nervous. I have learned my
statement by heart."
"What statement?" asked Lady Arabel, who was rather deeply engrossed in
turning the heel of the sock she was knitting.
"The statement I shall make when the sheep are divided from the goats."
"Oh, come, come," said kind Lady Arabel. "Things are not so bad as
that, surely. You must not be so dretfully pessimistic."
"You mistake me," said the sheeted lady, bridling. "There is, I am
confident, no cause whatever for pessimism on my part. I have no
misgivings as to the verdict. But not being used to courts of law, I
thought it best to learn my statement, as I say, by heart."
The old knitter had been rather annoyed to find her confession
interrupted. "A wicked ol' woman I may be," she said with more dignity.
"But I'll never regret givin' that bloody speshul a bit o' me mind this
mornin' when 'e turned saucy to the sugar queue. I ses to 'im----"
"We all have our faults," Lady Arabel's neighbour broke in. "But I
think, at this solemn moment, I may feel thankful that hastiness of
recrimination was never one of mine. All my life I have made it an
unalterable rule never to make a statement without first asking myself:
Is it _TRUE_? Is it _JUST_? Is it _KIND_?"
"You may well say so," replied Lady Arabel pleasantly. "I only wish the
younger generation would follow your example. Nowadays it is much more
likely to be: Is it true? No. Is it just? No. Is it kind? No. Is it
_FUNNY_? Yes. And out it comes."
"Be that as it may," said the ladylike creature. (One could see she was
a Real Lady even through the sheet. Obviously she read the _Morning
Post_ daily.) "Be that as it may, perhaps you can help me in one little
matter which is intriguing me slightly even at this solemn moment. Do
you suppose the sheep will be allowed to hear the trial of the goats, or
will the court be cleared? I must say I should be so interested to hear
the defence of the late churchwarden who eloped with----"
"Ah, please, please," said Lady Arabel, "don't talk in that dretful way.
Don't let your mind dwell on the worst. I assure you that you will be
all right."
"Of course I shall be all right, as you put it," said the elderly lady,
coldly drawing herself up. "Everybody can be my witness that I have kept
my candle burning in my small corner----"
"Good gracious," shrieked the kittenish mother. "A candle burning
to-night. And probably unshaded. Don't you know that those fiends in the
sky are always on the watch for the slightest illumination?"
"Fiends in the sky!" exclaimed the sheeted lady. "Do you mean to say
they are abroad even at this solemn moment?"
"Oh, don't talk such rot," implored the hard flapper. "Who the dickens
do you suppose was responsible for that crash?"
"Responsible for the crash!" said the other, whose tones were becoming
more and more alive with exclamation marks. "Is then the solemn work of
summoning us entrusted to the minions of the Evil One?"
A series of crashes interrupted her, the work of the adjacent gun. The
earth shook, and each report was followed by the curious ethereal wail
of shells on their way.
"What, again?" exclaimed Lady Arabel's sheeted neighbour. "I should have
thought one would have been ample. But still, one cannot be too careful,
and some people are heavy sleepers. I heard the first myself without any
possibility of mistake, and rose at once, though the slab lay heavy on
my chest----"
"Most unwise," said Lady Arabel, "to touch that sort of thing late at
night. I always have a little Benger myself."
Sarah Brown happened to look at Richard. His eyes were shut, but he was
smiling very broadly with tight lips, and his face was turned towards
the ceiling. His fingers were very tense and busy on his lap, as though
he were still fidgeting with magic. But her study of him was interrupted
by the loud denouncing voice of the very venerable man who had led the
procession of late-comers.
"A dog in this hallowed place," he said, pointing at the deeply
disconcerted Rupert who was weaving himself nervously in and out of his
master's legs. "Never in all the forty years of my ministration here
have I allowed such an outrage----"
"Gently, gently, my dear sir," protested the Vicar, a little roused. "I
am the minister of this church, and the dog is mine. I was indeed about
to turn it out when you entered, after which I lost sight of it for a
moment. Rupert, go home."
Rupert howled again, and lay down as if about to faint.
"Forty years have I been Vicar of this parish," said the veteran, "and
never----"
"What?" interrupted the Vicar, "Forty years Vicar of this parish. Then
you must be Canon Burstley-Ripp. How very extraordinary, I always
understood that he passed away quite ten years ago."
He approached the old man and strove to button-hole him. The sheet at
first foiled him in this intention, but he presently contented himself
with seizing a little corner of it, by which he led his aged brother
vicar into a corner. There they could be heard for some time
misunderstanding each other in low earnest tones.
"Ow, what a wicked ol' woman I bin an' bin," suddenly burst forth again
the repentant knitter. "I bin an' stole 'arf a pound o' sugar off of the
Eelite 'Atshop where I does a bit o' cleanin'. Ef I get out o' this
alive, I swear I'll repay it an 'undredfold--that is ef I can get that
much awf me sugar card...."
Sarah Brown was becoming sleepy. A blankness was invading her mind, and
the talk in the crypt seemed to lose its meaning, and to consist chiefly
of S's. She pondered idly on the family of children with their elders,
all of whom were now studying each other with a certain look of
disillusionment. It was a group whose relationships were difficult to
make out, the ages of many of the children being unnaturally
approximate. There seemed to be at least seven children under three
years old, and yet they all bore a strong and regrettable family
likeness. Several of the babies would hardly have been given credit for
having reached walking age, yet none had been carried in. The woman who
seemed to imagine herself the mother of this rabble was distributing
what looked like hurried final words of advice. The father with a
pensive eye was obviously trying to remember their names, and at
intervals whispering to a man apparently twenty years his senior, whom
he addressed as Sonny. It was all very confusing.
A long dim stretch of time seemed to have passed when suddenly the note
of a bugle sprang out across space. Somehow the air at once felt cooler
and more wholesome, the sound of the All-clear had something akin to the
sight of the sun after a thunderstorm, lighting up a crouching whipped
world.
"The Trump at last," said Lady Arabel's garrulous neighbour, rising with
alacrity, and twitching her sheet into more becoming folds. "I was just
wondering----"
But at that moment the two Vicars approached, and the elder one,
including both the spinster and the mysterious family in one glance,
spoke in a clerical yet embarrassed voice.
"Dear friends, a slight but inconvenient mistake has occurred, and I am
afraid I must ask you to submit blindly to my guidance in a matter
strangely difficult to explain, even as I--myself in much confusion--bow
to the advice of my reverend friend here. It would be out of place----"
The spinster interrupted, and, by the way she did it, one saw that she
was Chapel. "Excuse me, Canon," she said acidly, "but is not all
discussion out of place at this solemn moment?"
"Believe me, madam," replied the aged Burstley-Ripp. "You overrate the
solemnity of the moment. I must earnestly ask you all to return with me
to the places whence--labouring under an extraordinary error--we came
to-night. I see that Mrs. Parachute trusts me, and is prepared to lead
her little flock to rest again. You, madam----"
"Where Mrs. Parachute leads, far be it from me to seem behindhand," said
the other, much ruffled, as she gathered her sheet about her. By the way
she said it, one saw that she and Mrs. Parachute did not call. She bowed
to Lady Arabel, and became satirical, even arch. "Good afternoon,
Mrs.--er--, I am assured that the moment is not solemn, and therefore
solemn it shall not be. To turn to lighter subjects, I hope I shall have
the pleasure of meeting you and your delightful son and daughter again
at no distant date, the moment then being genuinely solemn. I fear I
have no visiting card on me, but--er--perhaps my slab just outside--very
superior granite--would do as a substitute...."
The pale party filed out of the crypt and disappeared. The remaining
Vicar smote his brow, and addressed the now calm Rupert in a low voice,
but with such unaccountable warmth that that harassed animal disappeared
precipitately in the direction of his home.
Lady Arabel, Sarah Brown, and Richard crossed the churchyard together.
"Oh, my dears, look," said Lady Arabel. "How too too dretful, that bomb
fell quite close to us. Do look how it has disturbed the graves...."