you poor funny old boy, when you vanished, and which I found in your room when I went there to cry, (Oh, how I cried when I found your odds and ends of verse about me there—­I really did think my heart was ‘broken’ in actual fact.) Don’t make me suffer any more, darling.  I’m sure your Colonel will be sweet about it and give us a nice little house all to ourselves, now he has seen what a splendid soldier you are.  If you stick to your folly about ‘disgrace’ I need not tell him our names and Grumper couldn’t take me away from you, even if he ever found out where we were.

  “I could go on writing all night, darling, but I’ll
  only just say again I am going to marry you and
  take care of you, Dam, in the army or out of it.

  “Your fiancee and friend,

  “LUCILLE GAVESTONE.”

Dam groaned aloud.

“Four o’ rum ’ot, is wot you want, mate, for that,” said the industrious self-improver at the shelf-table.  “Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an’ rine las’ night....  I’d give a ‘ogs’ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin’ Reggilashuns ’nor must bloomin’ sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or even in moderate-weather’ a doin’ of it ’isself in ‘is bloomin’ ‘moderate weather’ with water a runnin’ down ‘is back, an’ ’is feet froze into a puddle, an’ the fog a chokin’ of ‘im, an’ ’is blighted carbine feelin’ like a yard o’ bad ice—­an’ then find the bloomin’ winder above ‘is bed been opened by some kind bloke an’ ’is bed a blasted swamp...  Yus—­you ‘ave four o’ rum ’ot and you’ll feel like the bloomin’ ‘Ouse o’ Lords.  Then ’ave a Livin’stone Rouser.”  “Oh, shut up,” said Dam, cursing the Bathos of Things and returning to the beginning of Lucille’s letter.

* * * * *

In his somewhat incoherent reply, Dam assured Lucille that he was in the rudest health and spirits, and the particular pet of his Colonel who inquired after his health almost daily with tender solicitude; that he had exaggerated his feeling on That Evening when he had kissed Lucille as a lover, and begged forgiveness; that marriage would seriously hamper a most promising military career; that he had had no recurrence of the “fit” (a mere touch of sun); that it would be unkind and unfair of Lucille to bring scandal and disgrace upon a rising young soldier by hanging about the Lines and making inquiries about him with a view to forcing him into marriage, making him keep to a bargain made in a rash, unguarded moment of sentimentality; that, in any case, soldiers could not marry until they had a certain income and status, and, if they did so, it was no marriage and they were sent to jail; that his worst enemy would not do anything to drag him out once again into the light of publicity, and disgrace his family further, now that he had effectually disappeared and was being forgotten; and that he announced that he was known as Trooper Matthewson (E Troop, The Queen’s Greys, Cavalry Lines, Shorncliffe) to prevent Lucille from keeping her most unladylike promise of persecuting him.