"I don't know that it is. I can understand why men like you, Mr. Yellam, don't enlist. Why should you? But that doesn't change my feelings about soldiers. Whatever they may have been, whatever they are, I think of this: At any moment, with their hard work, with their poor pay, they may be called upon to give their lives for—us."
Her soft voice faltered. Perhaps Alfred was already in love. He may have been. When her voice failed, and he beheld her for the first time as a woman of sensibilities, tender for others, pleading for the less fortunate, all that was best in him leaped into being. Nothing but his disability to find words for his thoughts prevented him from avowing his feelings. He realised instantly that here sat the girl for him, the wife he wanted. His experiments in courtship, if you could term it that, confirmed his conviction that he had remained single so long simply because Fancy was waiting for him. She was absolutely right because the others had been as absolutely wrong.
"That's true," he heard himself saying.
Fancy went on in a livelier tone:
"Have you read Kipling, Mr. Yellam?"
"I seem to have heard tell of Mr. Rudyard Kipling in the newspapers."
"I want to tell you what he said about soldiers."
She quoted slowly:
"It's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and Tommy—go away! But it's—Thank you, Mr. Atkins, when the band begins to play."
Alfred was visibly impressed. He recalled the Highlander's words about war, such a war as he had never dreamed of. What if the band did begin to play? More, it surprised him that Fancy should quote Kipling. Obviously, she had enjoyed educational advantages denied to him. She spoke like the quality. He began to measure the distance between them, conscious of shrinkage in himself. To gain time he repeated her last words: