"Growing so old; don't be afraid of the truth, Belle. Am I very bald?"
"Bald! No, but you are grizzling fast, Phil; and when the fact is brought home to me by seeing it afresh, I ask myself why you shouldn't have a wife and children."
"I could, of course; there are plenty of young ladies now on the frontier. Oh, Belle! I thought we had settled this long ago. You can't leave Jack; you wouldn't with a clear conscience, if you could. I can't leave the regiment; I shouldn't like to, if I could. Is not that an end of marriage from our point of view? Besides," he turned to her now with a smile full of infinite tenderness, "I am not at all sure that I do want to marry you. When perfection comes into a man's life, can you not understand his being a little afraid--"
"Philip!"
"Not of you, dear; but this love of ours seems better than we are ourselves,--than I am, certainly. Then marriage, as I take it, is for young people, and what they call Love is the bribe held out by Nature to induce her thoughtless children to undertake a difficult duty. The sweet isn't unwholesome in itself, but that is no reason why we should call it manna from heaven and say it is better than plain, wholesome bread and butter."
"You are growing detestably didactic in your old age, Phil. When you come to the gatekeeper's house I shall have to amend your ways."
"You forget I shall be incurable then; but you are right. I am fast becoming a real old crusted military fogy, and of all fogies that is the worst. You can't think what a nuisance I am to the boys at mess; they depute a fresh one to prose to the Colonel every night."
"I know better. When young Cameron came home sick he had a very different story."
"Young Cameron isn't to be trusted. To begin with he had had a sunstroke, and then he proposed marrying on subaltern's pay."
"Well, you can't expect the world to give up falling in love because you don't approve."