"It's like the old days, isn't it, when you used to lie across my bed and I taught you French while I brushed my hair? That reminds me that I met an officer last week who said he'd heard you were amazingly good at getting what you wanted out of the French farmer people round about you. He was a man of quite thirty-five, by the way, and I asked him if he didn't think he ought to marry before he went back to the Front. And what do you think he answered me? He rubbed his fingers through his hair, and reddened and said: 'Well, I've always been fonder of outdoor amusements.' So, you see, falling in love and getting married are indoor amusements. I suppose they are, really—only it sounded very funny."
"Oh, by the way, Big Yeogh Wough, can't you telephone up North to Vera Brennan's people to-morrow and ask them to let her come here till Monday? Say you'll be going up yourself with her and me on Monday."
"Are you getting fonder of her?"
"I don't know. I shan't know till I see her again. There's only one thing I do know and that is that absence never makes the heart grow fonder. I should like to ram that proverb down the throat of the man who invented it."
So the girl with the amethyst eyes came down to our house by the eastern sea.
There was only Sunday for her, since she came late on Saturday evening and we were all going up to London on Monday morning. But that Sunday was enjoyed to the uttermost.
It was so strange to see Little Yeogh Wough with her! No wonder his sister and his young brother looked on in frank bewilderment, remembering that he had been simply a masterful schoolboy until the time of his putting on together of khaki and a moustache!
What a forcing power this war is! It changes people's ages as it changes their addresses, and that is saying a great deal.
At twelve o'clock that night I rose from the big old sofa where I had been sitting with the Boy and Vera Brennan, and said to them both:
"It is time we all went to bed now. That early train in the morning is really very inconveniently early, as you will find out."