"You funny boy! How many people, do you think, would know what you mean by that?"
"Not many, I dare say, but that's their fault, not mine. I always feel so sorry for them—for the people who can't understand why the sight of such things as scarlet silk stockings, and Parma violets, and black fox fur, and blue hyacinths, and pink carnations, helps one to live."
"Sulphur carnations," I put in. "Sulphur yellow is the adored colour of my womanhood, just as salmon pink was the adored colour of my childhood. For years of my little girlhood I spent all my pocket money on either salmon-pink ribbon or white narcissi. I would have gone without food or clothes to get either of these things. Of course, I shouldn't say this if anybody were here but ourselves. The servants would think me mad if they heard me—just as they would think you either mad, or bad, or both, for your joy in my scarlet silk stockings. I remember Old Nurse's amazement when you bought them for me. She would have thought it more natural for you to have bought me a satchel or a bottle of cheap lavender water or something else quite ordinary and respectable.... But, anyhow, I'm afraid the time for beautiful things is over for two or three years. The war is going to grind us down very low before it's done with."
He was so much brightened up that his failure to pass the eyesight test again next day did not dismay him in the least. He offered his help to the lovable colonel who was the recruiting officer for the district and who was sorely overworked already, and was soon throwing his whole heart into the business of bundling into His Majesty's Forces as many young men as he could get hold of.
He began with our cook, who had always had a weakness for him.
"Joanna, your young man ought to enlist. He's such a splendid fellow. The Army can't do without him."
"Oh, Master Roland!"
She began a string of objections and excuses. But Little Yeogh Wough got his way, as he always did when there was no red tape to come up against.
"You seem to have quite forgotten that you want a commission for yourself, Roland," I said to him after he had done a fortnight of indefatigable recruiting work.