“They just stuffed their handkerchiefs over their mouths and hung on. Discipline? That’s what I call discipline—just hanging on.”
“You’ll be fighting in respirators next.” The Weasel’s voice interrupted her brother’s story. . . .
Imagination got away with her again. Happy? Yes, in a way she was happy. Only. . . . Why didn’t Peter realize things? Why couldn’t Peter work a little less strenuously? He took soldiering as he had taken business. It absorbed him. When he mounted his horse of a morning—Driver Jelks holding out the stirrup—his face wore the old “office look.” . . . Of an evening, he studied his new profession. . . . And of course, he was smoking too much. . . . The children said Daddy was worried. . . . How did they know? . . . Perhaps he still regretted Nirvana. . . . Oh, why couldn’t she console him—time, time flew—and soon, a black hand must stretch out across the sea, take him from her—perhaps for ever. . . .
“You’re looking very serious, Mrs. P.J.” Bromley lounged across to her.
“Am I?” she smiled at him.
“You won’t desert us when we go into Camp, Mrs. P.J.?” He pulled gravely at his moustaches. “I was just wondering if you’d help me with the Mess. Colonel says men are no good at these things. You might help a fellow, Mrs. P.J.?”
“Why don’t you get Mutton’s to do the whole thing for you, Mr. Bromley?”
“Colonel says we ought to do it ourselves. It trains the cooks, you see. But I don’t know much about it. In South Africa, we ate when we could. . . .”
They began a grave discussion on crockery, mess-furniture, groceries, the wine-cellar: a discussion which lasted till the party broke up. Jack Baynet had taken a room at the Metropole; walked home with Alice and her husband. Bromley and Straker stayed for a last drink; departed together.
“Rather amusing, I thought”—commented Peter to his wife—“that first meeting between your brother and Mrs. Weasel. She looked as though she’d like to kiss him.”