“Why, Mater? Strikes me Molly ought to be put on guard. She might want to marry him. Nice old fizzle that ’ud be.”
Mrs Dunne seriously replied that he might trust her to be responsible for the safeguarding of Molly (aged fifteen) from contraction of an alliance with the enemy.
“Are you going in the R.F.C., Richard?” asked Molly, on her first morning.
They were in the orchard, and her mouth was stained a deep plum-purple.
“No.”
“You said last year—no, the year before that, wasn’t it?—that you weren’t keen on anything except a commission in the Flying Corps. And I was going to work the wings and ‘per ardua ad astra’ on a silk handkerchief for you. Lucky I didn’t.”
“Plenty of chaps you could have given it to.”
Molly fastened strong pointed teeth into the downy blue of yet another plum; and then asked: “Are you going into the R.E.?”
“No.”
“Gunner, then?”