A Country Wooing Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I would have wrote if I’d known you wanted me to,” she apologized.
    “Another illiterate. I thought you girls had a governess.”
    “Yes, she reads all the time,” Loo told him. “She reads novels. She’s reading me all about a haunted house in Cornwall, with a dungeon and a ghost.”
    “Edifying!” Alex said, lifting a brow. “We must look into this novel-reading governess and see if she ever reads grammar. Come and sit down, ladies, if you can find a chair for this brood of gypsies cluttering up the place.”
    It was not impossible to find two more seats in a room that boasted six sofas and a dozen chairs, but it was impossible to find any silence or privacy. The children still found their soldier brother too marvelous a novelty to leave his side, and he didn’t seem much disposed to pushing them off. He took Babe on his knee and put up with the twins’ pestering in a very good spirit.
    “Why did you take off your uniform, Alex?” Bung demanded.
    “Because I’ve already showed it off.”
    “I wish I had a uniform like yours,” Willie said. “I’d go and shoot a million Frenchies.”
    “Do you think I wore that nice outfit to crawl through the mud and kill my fellowman? That one’s reserved for slaying ladies.”
    “Did you bring your fighting outfit home? Can I see it, Alex?”
    “I didn’t carry a tattered, mud-stained coat home. I never want to see it again.”
    “I wish I had it. I’d love to have it,” Bung declared.
    “It was full of lice,” Alex said blandly.
    Bung stared, disbelieving. “Lice! In your clothes?”
    “Certainly. It’s not easy to bathe when you’re bivouacking in a field.”
    Mrs. Tannie shook her head sadly. “You’re making my flesh creep, Alex. I can feel vermin crawling all over me. And you, Master Jackanapes,” she added to Robin, “never mind peering at me like a stuffed frog. Lice should not be discussed in company.”
    From long familiarity with her dark humor, the family had learned to ignore Aunt Tannie.
    “What did you eat?” Willie asked.
    “Whatever we could find. A rabbit, if we were lucky. Roots, windfall oranges, bitter as bedamned. Black bread. How I look forward to Pembers’s dinner. And sleeping in a bed with no rats prowling around, no rain falling on me, no fear of a bullet parting my hair.”
    The twins exchanged a wary look. Anne assumed their brother’s propaganda of disillusionment had begun.
    “The fighting and shooting must have been exciting,” Willie suggested hopefully.
    “Very exciting. Of course, not many days are actually spent fighting and shooting. The dreariest part of being a soldier is the waiting. Sitting around for a month, waiting to attack. Then a day’s ‘fighting and shooting,’ as you call it. The survivors who aren’t maimed ride twenty miles and wait another month.”
    Willie frowned into his lap. He lifted his head and smiled. “I’ll bet it’d be exciting being a sailor!”
    “A pity we couldn’t ask Admiral Lord Nelson,” Alex said. “Of course, he’s been shot dead already, after losing one eye and one arm. But I daresay it would be great fun.”
    Willie was displeased with his hero. “Charlie always said you were having the best time of any of us. He wished he was free to go off to war, but he had responsibilities.”
    Anne stole a look at Alex, expecting some show of anger. She was surprised to see only sadness. “He remembered it occasionally, did he?” The words stung her, but she was still surprised at the sad spirit behind them.
    “Alex, didn’t you like being a soldier?” Bung asked.
    “I liked parts of it well enough. If wasn’t what I thought it would be when I joined up. I didn’t know the uniforms got so dirty, Bung, and so full of holes.”
    “Bullet holes?” Bung asked, ever the optimist.
    “We’ll talk about it later—it’s impolite to bore our guests.”
    The guests had shown no signs of boredom, but Babe and Loo had to tell their cousins what souvenirs had been