the meeting, a burly
farmer, eagerly came to the side of the wagon, and helped the American
officer into the cart. Then with a stentorian voice the chairman
announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell
us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted
gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them. His
speech, which was a racy summary of all that America was doing to help
the Allies, was delivered to a ringing accompaniment of cheers from the
thronged market-place, rising to special thunder when the captain dwelt
on the wheat and bacon that America was pouring across the Atlantic
to feed a hungry Europe.

"We've tightened our own belts already; we can tighten them, I dare say,
a few holes more. Everybody in America's growing something, and making
something. When a man thinks he's done enough, and wants to rest a bit,
the man next him gets behind him with a bradawl. There's no rest for
anybody. We've just registered _thirteen million_ men. That sounds like
business, doesn't it? No slacking there! Well, we mean business. And you
mean business. And the women mean business."

Then a passage about the women, which set the land girls grinning at each
other, and at the men in the crowd, ending in three cheers for Marshal
Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, which came echoing back from the Fourteenth
Century church and the old houses which ringed the market-place.

All eyes were on the speaker, no one noticed the tall man with the
olive-skinned child on his shoulder. He himself, with thumping pulses,
never ceased to watch the figures and movements in the second wagon. He
saw Miss Henderson sit down and another woman also in tunic and knickers
take her place. He watched her applauding the speaker, or talking with
the clergyman behind her, or the lady with the lace parasol. And when the
speech was over, amid a hurricane of enthusiasm, when the resolution had
been put and carried, and the bells in the old church-tower began to ring
out a deafening joy-peal above the dispersing crowd, he saw the American
officer jump down from the speaker's wagon and return to Miss Henderson.
Steps were brought, and Captain Ellesborough handed out the ladies. Then
he and Rachel Henderson went away side by side, laughing and talking,
towards the porch of the church, where Delane lost them from sight.

The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the
field where the co