Jack laughed joyously.
“Jolly old dodger!” he said, irreverently. “But never mind! I daresay he’s right!—he’s like my father who swears he’s obliged to live down here in the country with one manservant to look after him in his fishing cottage by the river, because he can’t afford to live anywhere else! And yet I’ve heard—but after all it’s only silly rumour.”
“What is?” she enquired.
“Why, I’ve heard he’s as rich as Crœsus—but I’m sure it can’t be true, for ever since my mother died when I was a little chap of ten, we’ve always been pretty hard up.”
“But you went to college?” she said. “And you travelled abroad with a ‘crack’ tutor?”
“Oh, yes!—all that! Nothing grudged so far as my training has gone. But no superfluous cash about. And now I shan’t want anything from anybody once I’m in the Army. I shall be clothed and fed and have my pay for pocket-money! Jolly! Don’t you congratulate me?”
She looked full at him, frankly and sweetly.
“Yes, I do congratulate you!” she said. “I congratulate you on the right spirit you show, to voluntarily offer yourself to fight in the great Cause! Personally I hate the very thought of War,—it seems to me criminal, barbarous and a kind of God’s curse on the world—but if the battle is for good then all good men should join in it. I shall miss you dreadfully—”
She broke off—and a soft dew filled her pretty eyes. Jack saw,—and his heart gave a quick bound. He raised the little hand that rested so contentedly in his own and kissed it with the utmost tenderness.
“That’s enough for me!” he said. “‘I fear no foe in shining armour!’ But do take care of yourself! Don’t muck about with the V.A.D. Hospital under the orders of that virulent old dowager who has made herself ‘commandant’! If you must do that sort of thing, why not train for a real Army nurse?”