"Don't be anxious about us.

We shall get into the market-hall by a back way and find out what's going on.

They've probably got the hose on by now.
Nothing like a hose-pipe for this kind of thing! Congratters on a splendid bit of driving!" "Hear, hear," said Buntingford.
They went off, and Helena was left alone with the farm people, who made much of her, and poured into her ears more or less coherent accounts of the rioting and its causes.

A few discontented soldiers, an unpopular factory manager, and a badly-handled strike:--the tale was a common one throughout England at the moment, and behind and beneath the surface events lay the heaving of that "tide in the affairs of men," a tide of change, of restlessness, of revolt, set in motion by the great war.
Helena paced up and down the orchard slope behind the house, watching the conflagration which was beginning to die down, startled every now and then by what seemed to be the sound of shots, and once by the rush past of a squadron of mounted police coming evidently from the big country town some ten miles away.

Hunger asserted itself, and she made a raid on the hamper in the car, sharing some of its contents with the black-eyed children of the farm.