"Garn!"
"I mean it. Stryte. Next door to a angel—that's wot you are. She's the angel. Tell 'er I said so—that's if you can, you twig? And say that when I 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day before yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'd gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with the idear—mind you rub that in!—of strikin' a blow for Beauty as well as for Britanniar, twig?" The thin elbow in the tweed sleeve nudged her, provoking a joyous giggle.
"I'm fly, no fear. Are you to 'ave a uniform, an' all like that?"
His face fell. "The kit don't run to much beyond a smasher 'at an' puttees, but they're the regular Service kind, an' then there's the bandolier—an' the gun. She ain't the newest rifle served out to Her Majesty's Army, not by twenty years. Condemned Martini, a chap says, who's in the know—an' kicks like a mule when I let 'er off—made me nose bleed fust time I tried with blank. But when we gets a bit more used to each other, it 'll be a case of bloomin' Doppers rollin' over in the dust, like rock-rabbits. Don't forget to tell 'er as wot I said so."
"Why ... ain't she a Dutchy 'erself? She wrote a letter for me in their rummy lingo to my young man!"
"Cripps!" He stared in dismay. "Blessed if I 'adn't forgot. But if an Englishman marries a foreigner," he swelled heroic, "that puts 'er in the stryte runnin'. And 'art an' 'and I'm 'ers, whenever she'll 'ave me! Tell 'er that—with a double row of crosses from W. Keyse! And—can you remember a bit o' poetry?" He recited with shamefaced rapidity:
"It is my sentry-go to-night,
And when I watch the moon so bright,
Shining o'er South Africa plain,
I'll think of thee, sweet Greta Du Taine."
Her eyes were full of awe and wonder. "Lor! you don't mean to say you made up that by yourself?"
The poet nodded. "Reckon about as much. Like it?"
"It's perfect lovely! Better than they 'ave in the penny books."