Part 26 (2/2)

”That's only a rumor! I'm sticking to my job. Get one for yourself, and then maybe I'll talk o' marrying you--and may be no!”

”Get me a job? I've got one--the one you've been having!”

”Aye--but it's my job the noo, and I'll be keeping it. I like earning my siller, and I'm minded to keep on doing it, Andy.”

And off she goes, and Andy after her, to find she's told the truth, and that they'll not turn her off to make way for him.

”We'd like to have you back, Andy,” they'll tell him. ”But if the women want to stay, stay they can.”

Well, I'll be asking you if it's likely Jenny will act so to her boy, that's hame frae the wars? Ye'll never mak' me think so till you've proved it. Here's the picture I see.

I see Jenny getting more and more tired, and waiting more and more eagerly for Andy to come hame. She's a woman, after a', d'ye ken, and a young one. And there are some sorts of work women were not meant or made to do, save when the direst need compels. So, wi' the ending of the war, and its strain, here's puir Jennie, wondering how long she must keep on before her Andy comes to tak' care of her and let her rest.

And--let me whisper something else. We think it shame whiles, to talk o' some things. But here's Nature, the auld mither of all of us. She's a purpose in the world, has that auld mither--and it's that the race shall gae on. And it's in the heart and the soul, the body and the brain, of Jennie that she's planted the desire that her purpose shall be fulfilled.

It's bairns Jenny wants, whether or no she kens that. It's that helps to mak' her so eager for Andy to be coming back to her. And when she sees him, at long last, I see her flinging herself in his arms, and thanking G.o.d wi' her tears that he's back safe and sound--her man, the man she's been praying for and working for.

There'll be problems aboot women, dear knows. There are a' the la.s.sies whose men wull no come back, like Andy--whose lads lie buried in a foreign grave. It's not for me to talk of the sad problem of the superfluous woman--the la.s.sie whose life seems to be over when it's but begun. These are affairs the present cannot consider properly. It will tak' time to show what wall be happening and what maun be done.

But I'm sure that no woman wull give up the opportunity to mak' a hame, to bring bairns into the world, for the sake of continuing the sort of freedom she's had during the war. It wad be like cutting off her nose to do that.

Oh, I ken fine that men wull have to be more reasonable than they've been, sometimes, in the past. Women know more than they did before the war opened the gates of industry to them. They'll not be put upon, the way I'm ashamed to admit they sometimes were in the old days. But I think that wull be a fine thing for a' of us. Women and men wull be comrades more; there'll be fewer helpless la.s.sies who canna find their way aboot without a man to guide them. But men wull like that--I can tell ye so, though they may grumble at the first.

The plain man wull have little use for the clinging vine as a wife.

He'll want the sort of wife some of us have been lucky enough to have even before the war. I mean a woman who'll tak' a real note of his affairs, and be ready to help him wi' advice and counsel; who'll understand his problems, and demand a share in shaping their twa lives. And that's the effect I'm thinking the war is maist likely to have upon women. It wall have trained them to self-reliance and to the meeting of problems in a new way.

And here's anither thing we maun be remembering. In the auld days a la.s.sie, if she but would, could check up the lad that was courtin'

her. She could tell, if she'd tak' the trouble to find oot, what sort he was--how he stud wi' those who knew him. She could be knowing how he did at work, or in business, and what his standing was amang those who knew him in that way. It was different when a man was courtin' a la.s.sie. He could tell little about her save what he could see.

Noo that's been changed. The war's been cruelly hard on women as weel as on men. It's weeded them oot. Only the finest could come through the ordeals untouched--that was true of the women at hame as of the men on the front line. And now, when a lad picks out a la.s.sie he's no longer got the excuses he once had for making a mistake.

He can be finding oot how she did her work while he was awa' at the war. He can be telling what those who worked wi' her thought of her, and whether she was a good, steady worker or not. He can make as many inquiries aboot her as she can aboot him, and sae they'll be on even terms, if they're both sensible bodies, before they start.

And there's this for the la.s.sies who are thinking sae muckle of their independence. They're thinking, perhaps, that they can pick and choose because they've proved they can earn their livings and keep themselves. Aye, that's true enough. But the men can do more picking and choosing than before, too!

But doesna it a' come to the same answer i' the end--that it wall tak'

more than even this war to change human nature? I think that's so.

It's unfas.h.i.+onable, I suppose, to talk of love. They'll be saying I'm an auld sentimentalist if I remind you of an old saying--that it's love that makes the world go round. But it's true. And love wall be love until the last trumpet is sounded, and it wall make men and women, lads and la.s.sies, act i' the same daft way it always has--thank G.o.d!

Love brings man and woman together--makes them attractive, one to the ither. Wull some matter of economics keep them apart? Has it no been proved, ever since the beginning of the world, that when love comes in nothing else matters? To be sure--to be sure.

It's a strange thing, but it's aye the matters that gie the maist concern to the prophets of evil that gie me the greatest comfort when I get into an argument or a discussion aboot the war and its effects upon humanity. They're much concerned about the bairns. They tell me they've got out of hand these last years, and that there's no doing anything wi' them any more. Did those folk see the way the Boy Scouts did, I wonder?

Everywhere those laddies were splendid. In Britain they were messengers; they helped to guard the coasts; they did all sorts of work frae start to finish. They released thousands of men who wad have been held at hame except for them.

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