"Oh, of course I've told her all about that!" he said with a laugh.
He had worn khaki five months and a half, and had worked hard, and become a full lieutenant and been entrusted at nineteen with difficult Home Service jobs that would not have been given to many a man of thirty, when one day he came to us in the East Coast house with such a glow on his face as I had never seen there before.
"I believe I am going to get out to the Front at last," he announced. "Lady Geraldine Desmer and Captain Jarvice both know influential people at the War Office, and it will be very surprising if between them I don't get what I want. Captain Jarvice is going to take me up to the War Office with him to-morrow. He says he isn't going to wait about here in England much longer, and at the same time he's promised me that he won't go unless I go with him. And he really does seem to have influence, so I believe I'm all right now. Besides, Gretton's got out there, so I'm bound to go. There's a fate in it."
So, two days later, the brave young feet ran up the steps of the house eagerly again, and the fine young figure met me in the hall with a leaner figure beside it.
He waited for Captain Jarvice to tell me what there was to tell. And that charming cavalry officer did tell me, while he held out both his hands to me, looking at me with eyes that had a mist of moisture in them.
"I've got them to take him. We're both going out with the 7th Melchesters in five days' time. I've been wondering whether you'll bless me for this or curse me."
"Roland, go and tell your father."
When they had gone, an hour later, his father and I and his sister sat and looked at each other and were very silent.
The next day the Boy came again, this time bringing his luggage—all the extra things which he had had in his Norwich rooms and could not take to the Front. There were things to be locked in his trunks and things to be packed on his wardrobe shelves, and certain especially precious treasures which he poured in a heap into his private drawer in that same capacious piece of furniture.
"I've lost the key of this drawer, so I can't lock it separately from the whole wardrobe, but you'll see that nobody goes to it, won't you, Big Yeogh Wough?" he said wistfully as he pressed down a few unimportant articles of clothing on the top of the little piles of letters and notebooks which he had just heaped up.