It appeared it was the driver of the Railway Delivery Van.  I smiled at Boyce’s ostrich-like faith in the invisibility of his hinder bulk.  What could occur in Wellingsford without it being known at once to vanmen and postmen and barbers and servants and masters and mistresses?  How could a man hope to conceal his goings and comings and secret actions?  He might just as well expect to take a secluded noontide bath in the fountain in Piccadilly Circus.

“Perhaps that’s why the matter of those repairs was so pressing, sir,” said Marigold.

“No doubt of it,” said I.

Marigold hung about, his finger-tips pushing towards me mustard and apples and tulips and everything that one does not eat with egg.  But it was no use.  I had no desire to pursue the conversation.  I continued my breakfast stolidly and read the newspaper propped up against the coffee-pot.  So many circumstances connected with Boyce’s visit were of a nature that precluded confidential discussion with Marigold,—­that precluded, indeed, confidential discussion with anyone else.  The suddenness of his departure I learned that afternoon from Mrs. Boyce, who sent me by hand a miserable letter characteristically rambling.  From it I gathered certain facts.  Leonard had come into her bedroom at seven o’clock, awakening her from the first half-hour’s sleep she had enjoyed all night, with the news that he had been unexpectedly summoned back.  When she came to think of it, she couldn’t imagine how he got the news, for the post did not arrive till eight o’clock, and Mary said no telegram had been delivered and there had been no call on the telephone.  But she supposed the War Office had secret ways of communicating with officers which it would not be well to make known.  The whole of this war, with its killing off of the sons of the best families in the land, and the sleeping in the mud with one’s boots on, to say nothing of not being able to change for dinner, and the way in which they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot, was all so mysterious that she had long ago given up hope of understanding any of its details.  All she could do was to pray God that her dear boy should be spared.  At any rate, she knew the duty of an English mother when the country was in danger; so she had sent him away with a brave face and her blessing, as she had done before.  But, although English mothers could show themselves Spartans—­(she spelt it “Spartians,” dear lady, but no matter)—­yet they were women and had to sit at home and weep.  In the meanwhile, her palpitations had come on dreadfully bad, and so had her neuritis, and she had suffered dreadfully after eating some fish at dinner which she was sure Pennideath, the fishmonger—­she always felt that man was an anarchist in disguise—­had bought out of the condemned stock at Billingsgate, and none of the doctor’s medicines were of the slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part so suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to comfort an old woman who had sent her only son to die for his country and was ready, when it pleased God, if not sooner, to die in the same sacred cause?