Hot argument here, following a demand from Lil the Londoner of—
"What's the matter with our own boys?"
Everybody had a word to say on this perennial poignant question of young men and marriage.
I rather dreaded being asked what my views were. Silently I sat, going on with my work; which was shortening Elizabeth's second smock for her. The things are made in three sizes only, and the smallest of them was just a trifle voluminous, and long for the little boyish figure of my chum. As I stitched away at the tuck I was taking in it, I wondered when my turn was coming.
It didn't come.
None of the other girls asked me if I would like to marry a dark man or a fair one, a Colonial or a Britisher.
Then I wondered a little at that. Afterwards, long afterwards, I learnt the rather touching fact that Vic had forbidden the lot of them to tease "young Celery-face" about any young men.... Vic had tumbled to it that, honestly, I didn't like it. And Vic had a good deal of fine feeling, tucked away, upon this subject.
Vic's own love-affair (her "boy" had died in enemy hands, I afterwards heard) had made her sensitive for others.
So, as Elizabeth had gone shopping in the tiny village known to our mess as "the town," I was left to a peaceful Saturday afternoon.
It was on the Monday after that that a queer thing happened to me.