"You don't know his regiment or anything?"
"Not a thing. Not the colour of his eyes, or why he never wrote to me before, or where he's been for the last seven years, or what doing. Absolutely nothing do I know about him. Except that he wants me to be his wife!"
My stupor of the morning had given way to a reaction of bravado; I laughed into Elizabeth's little steady face.
"Knew you weren't serious," she said. "I'm glad you're bucking up, though. It's quite a mercy that you have got the sack. You'd have had to go home and take things easy for a bit in any case, so——"
Here I interrupted her with more vigour than I'd felt capable of all day.
"Go home?" I echoed, really nettled. "D'you imagine that I'm going home after this? Not much! Go home! Go back to——" I took a long breath to underline the words—"to Agatha?"
Now, Agatha was my young stepmother.
Nobody could find fault with Agatha. She was sensible, quiet, admirably domesticated, a splendid needlewoman and parish worker, an excellent wife to Dad, and always tactful towards his grown-up children. Only—well, Agatha was a person who never made a mistake in her life. And the people who do make headstrong, passionate, idiotic mistakes—well, is it to that sort of person that they turn when they're in trouble? I ask you.
Elizabeth shook her cropped head. She had to see it.
"What will you do, then? Try for another job in town, I suppose?"