As soon as we were alone she told me all she had been enduring, which it seemed she had been careful not to mention in her letters to Jack. "I simply can't tell you,
Uncle," she concluded pathetically, "how wearing it is to be constantly thanking somebody for something I'd ever so much rather be without. And yet—what else can I do?"
I suggested that she might strictly forbid all future indulgence in these orgies of generosity, and she supposed meekly that she should really have to do something of that sort, though we both knew how extremely improbable it was that she ever would.
This morning I had a letter from her. Jack had got leave at last and she was expecting him home that very afternoon, so I must come down and see him before his six days expired. "I wish now," she went on, "that I had taken your advice, but it was so difficult somehow. Because ever since I told Jillings and the others about Jack's coming home they have been going about smiling so importantly that I'm horribly afraid they're planning some dreadful surprise, and I daren't ask them what. Now I must break off, as I must get ready to go to the station with Tony and meet dear Jack...."
Then followed a frantic postscript. "I know now! They've dressed poor Tony up in a little khaki uniform that doesn't even fit him! And, what's worse, they've put up a perfectly terrible triumphal arch over the front gate, with 'Hail to our Hero' on it in immense letters. They all seem so pleased with themselves—and anyway there's no time to alter anything now. But I don't know what Jack will say."
I don't either, but I could give a pretty good guess. I shall see him and Celia to-morrow. But I shall be rather surprised if I see Jillings.
F.A.
Old Lady (quite carried away). "How nice it is to have the ticket proffered, as it were, instead of thrust upon one!"