Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/217

 road some three hundred yards from the villa, and Lesbia dismounted that they might walk back together.

‘It is that, Lesbia, eh?’

‘Certainly it is, the battle of Roche’s Tower. You will hardly believe me, Mrs Whyte, when I tell you that my mother had a weird day-dream about it more than two years ago, and that I went over the very ground myself this time last year.’

‘How strange! Well, I would almost rather it had been an earthquake as we thought it was, than this; we might have escaped for the fright. A battle is worse. Think of the desolation left in so many homes, and the sufferings of the wounded!’

‘Yes, it’s very sad, Mrs Whyte,’ answered the young girl, her luminous eyes moistening. ‘Listen! the firing is getting heavier; it must be an awful battle.’

‘What madness can have inspired our Ministry to embark in such a war, or our Legislature to sanction it?’ said Mrs Whyte.

‘For my part,’ remarked her husband, who had just joined them, ‘I believe they’ll have a lesson, these people. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Redhill were to get a thrashing, and then Ireland will go. We ought to have let her go when we might with a good grace, then she would have stood by us. Now there'll be the devil to pay. But no doubt there are parties at home and abroad whom this game suits.’

‘A pretty game indeed!’ said Lesbia bitterly, as the roar of the artillery, some two hundred miles distant, swelled louder again.

‘Yes, war’s a dreadful thing,’ said Mrs Whyte, with a sigh, ‘and I do not see how any circumstances can ever justify it.’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Whyte,’ said Lesbia; ‘I think the