THE ENGLISH WAY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1561, 8 June 1916, Page 4

THE ENGLISH WAY.

AN AMERICAN VIEW. (By Jane Anderson in the Daily Mail.) At a certain cross-road, where there are green holds on one side and a low hill rising up on the other, there is a little inn. It is called the Magpie Inn. There is above the door a sign in tall letters with a, magpie painted above them. But the sign is very old, and the rain has stained it so that the magpie has lost his black coni. He is both grey and blind, and instead of his brilliant markings of white (he thatched roof throws a purple shadow across his wings. I\ Inch gives him mysteriously an air of gravity and great modesty. It was because of the sign that I wanted to have tea at this inn. I did not know the wonderful things that were behind the closed door of it. I did not know that it had anything to do with war : I thought that I had come into a little corner of England which had passed unscathed. I saw only the wide fields marked with broad bands of sunlight, and in the yard of the inn the two rows of jonquils, very bright and gay above the grey stones of the walk. I knocked at the door ; and 1 was admitted, not into a hallway, but into a little shop. It was, it seemed, a sweet shop. There was a wooden counter scrubbed vei - y clean; and on the broad sill of the window five glass jars stood in a row. They were filled with red and yellow sweets. “Twelve a penny,” said my hostess, So I purchased —modestly.

During: the time she counted them out I looked ut her ; and I thought that I had found, in England, one woman whom the sorrow and the grave deprivation of war had not come home. And I thought, too, that there was something beautiful in her face, with the grey hair brushed back smoothly from her broad forehead and the fine colour in her cheeks.

Then I saw that she was tearing up a strip of brown paper into three small squares and counting my yellow sweets into three small heaps on them. “It’s the war,” she said. “We’ve no bags for sweets now.” And she added, with some concern, that she hoped I would not mind carrying the awkward parcels, above all since there was no string with which to do them up. Go I discovered that, after all, the mark of the war had reached the Magpie Inn. But I was glad that it was not a bigger, and blacker mark . This was before I went into the kitchen for my tea. It seemed that the dining-room was closed, that 'since the war there was no longer any need for the big tables, and for the fireplace for which logs must be of a certain size. My hostess was most apologetic. But I liked the kitchen, with the wet wood cracking in the deep grate and the two great sides of new bacon drying above the mantelpiece. But there was something that I did not. understand about the window ; on the sill three squares of white cardboard were placed. I wondered what was printed on the faces of these three squares for passers-by to read. Go when.my tea was served, I asked about them, and my hostess brought them for me to see. In the centre of each was a scarlet emblem, and below there was printed the fact that from this house a man had gone out to fight for his country and his King. On one of them, below the black letters, the name of a hoy, with his age, had been printed with ink.

My hostess, with her hands folded under her white apron, stood beside me while I looked at. them. “I’ve three sons fighting,” she said, and told me the names of the regiments and how long they had served. “It’s the War Office, I’m thinking that sends these cards to you, and there’s not a house for five miles along this road,” she said, “which a’ not one of these.”

Then I wanted In ask her why, on one of the cards, the mime had been printed in ink. But 1 was af'raid to ask.

But she told me. “My youngest hoy was at Ypres,” she said. “That’s his name, there. I wrote it there when the letter came from his captain. His captain said my lad ’ad been all he should V been. Said I’d reason to be proud of ’im.” Then she brought me the captain’s letter. It was written in a big, boyish scrawl, and it said that Lance-Corporal John Harley had been killed while he was helping his wounded captain to get out from under fire. Therefore the captain was writing to Joseph Harley’s mother to tell her that he owed his life to her son. It was a wonderful letter.

“It’s not much we can be givin’,” she said. This wa« what she told me; this mother who had given three sons to the war.

Then she look me out through the low doorway of the kitchen and into a, little paved walk which was covered over with a roof of vines. And there I saw the most remarkable thing of all. For there in a big cage was a magpie, and he was not at all like the painted magpie on the sign. He was instead very sleek and brilliant, with clear markings of white. He was also friendly. For he took a. hit of wood from the bars of his cage and presented it to me. And he said the only two words that he knew. He said, “Welcome home.” And Mrs Harley smiled.

But I went down the little walk thinking of the time when the two sons would return from Egypt and of the other son whose name was printed on the square of cardboard. And I was glad beyond measure that 1 had come to tea in the kitchen with its high settle. For I had found, where I had least hoped to find it, one great thing. • Even in the fact that there was neither twine nor a paper bag for my purchase 1 had found it. I had Seen the pride and the faith and the loyalty with which England is fighting. I had found the price she is paying for war.