‘You seem the bride!’ he said.
‘But I couldn’t wear this gown to be married in now!’ she replied, ecstatically, ‘or I shouldn’t have put it on and made it dusty. It is really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can’t think. That was with my taking it out so many times to look at. I have never put it on—never—till now!’
‘Selina, I am thinking of giving up the army. Will you emigrate with me to New Zealand? I’ve an uncle out there doing well, and he’d soon help me to making a larger income. The English army is glorious, but it ain’t altogether enriching.’
‘Of course, anywhere that you decide upon. Is it healthy there for Johnny?’
‘A lovely climate. And I shall never be happy in England . . . Aha!’ he concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, ‘would to Heaven I had come straight back here!’
As the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united pair were thrown into juxtaposition with Bob Heartall among the rest who had been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried inside him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness. He took occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head at Selina as he addressed her in an undertone—
‘This is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho! ’Twill teach en the liberty you’ll expect when you’ve married en!’
‘What does he mean by a “topper,”’ the sergeant-major asked, who, not being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and also seemed to suppose ‘bridegroom’ to be an anticipatory name for himself. ‘I only hope I shall never be worse treated than you’ve treated me to-night!’
Selina looked frightened. ‘He didn’t mean you, dear,’ she said as they moved on. ‘We thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your coming just at this time. Had you—heard anything about—what I intended?’
‘Not a breath—how should I—away up in Yorkshire? It was by the merest accident that I came just at this date to make peace with you for my delay.’