THE V.C.
My cousin Agatha has been a bad correspondent ever since she married my old friend, George Thimblewell, which means for the past five-and-twenty years, so in ordinary circumstances I do not expect more from her than a "hasty line" to tell me how the youngsters are doing (George, of course, never writes at all). But I must say I was surprised and not a little hurt when, in the skimpy margin of a letter dealing mainly with the difficulty of devising breakfast-dishes, she scribbled in the most casual manner conceivable, "George has got the V.C. at last."
George, my dear old school-chum, with the V.C., and his wife tells me of it as casually as if it had been a gumboil! I sat with her letter before me and looked back through the years, seeing us two—George and myself—as we were long before Agatha even knew him. Had I not fostered the yearning for heroic deeds in his young bosom? Was it not possible, nay probable, that the influence of his boyhood's companion had helped to mould his character and prepare it for this glorious if belated achievement? Upon my word it seemed to me that I myself might well take a certain amount of credit for that decoration. And here was his wife mentioning it as though she scarcely expected me to be interested. Never a date, never a detail.
I was so ruffled that I decided, since she vouchsafed no information, to ask for none, as became a man with proper pride. I adopted a semi-jocular vein to meet the case.
"I have known your V.C. longer than you have, Agatha," I wrote, "and am as pleased and proud as you can be. The strong silent type—you can rely upon them. Quiet and domesticated, requiring little attention, helpful about the house, undemonstrative perhaps, but all the time ready for the most desperate emergency. Let me know when George is to be at home, and I shall come to dinner and hear all about it."
As I sealed my note it occurred to me that George must be the first special constable to win the Cross, and I felt a glow of satisfaction to realise that we must now be eligible for that most glorious of all decorations.
A few days later came another note from Agatha, about sugar-cards this time, but with a postscript which said, "It isn't like you to chaff me, James. I don't see that there is anything particularly funny about George having got the Vacuum Cleaner which he promised me long ago."