Yes, I understood. Rumour had already reached me that Miss Primkins had only used three hundredweight of coal through the whole of the winter (of course, in our village everybody knows how much everybody else buys of everything), and she had been seen out in the woods gathering sticks. She had cut her milk down to a half-pint a day, and that was consumed by Rehoboam (the cat). She seldom had any meat, and practised all sorts of pitiful little economies, living chiefly on the vegetables she had grown in her garden. But she never let anything interfere with a coin going into the Sunday offertory, or her knitting for the troops; and she gave a donation to the Red Cross Fund as gladly as anyone.
It makes one’s heart ache to think how many poor elderly ladies there are up and down the land, who have lost what at best was but a very modest meed of comfort, in the present financial upheaval; and these have additional anxiety in the fact that it would be torture to them were their poverty paraded before the world. They have not the physical strength to engage in national work, though their spirits are valiant enough for any self-sacrifice. So, since it is all they can do for their country, they shoulder their burdens uncomplainingly, keeping a frail body alive on sugarless tea and sparsely-buttered bread, while they knit long, long thoughts into socks and comforters, if by any means they can raise the money to purchase the wool.
No Fund is large enough to embrace such as these; no charity could ever meet their case. All the same they are part of the bulwark strength of England, these dear, faithful women, who in old age and feeble health hide their own privations beneath a brave exterior, willing to make any personal sacrifice rather than Might should triumph over Right.
“Miss Primkins!” I exclaimed, when I heard of the Cardiff visit, “I believe you’re the good fairy who, I used to think, lived at the entrance to the waterfall cave under the hill; and I’m certain you’ve been sent up here for the explicit purpose of relieving me of that meat! If you’re going to Cardiff, it’s your clear duty to take a griskin to each of your sisters—hearty-eating boys, did you say? Good! That will rid me of two! Well, you’ll find them at the station in the morning waiting for the 9 o’clock train—we’ll do them up to look like hothouse grapes and pineapples.”