Montague raised his hat. "Good evening," he said.
"So long," said Private Waller. "See you in the morning."
When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air of pride. "What do you think of my pal?" he asked, with an air of proprietorship.
"G'wan," said Emily disdainfully; "'e ain't your pal."
"He is, too."
"'E ain't!" She tossed her head. "Don't I know one when I sees one; me, the daughter of a footman in Lady Swankbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E blooming well ain't—'e's a gentleman!"
Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous little cockney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say; or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by that polite scion of servitude? "But I'll see it through," he muttered savagely, biting his lip, "if only to prove that the under-dog, like all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!"
VIII
It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton, returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home, found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its unique spell over us and our children for generations to come—"Somewhere in France."
Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.