Millwood came back from some platform engagements, and Muriel described to me the scene of his meeting with Herbert; she mentioned that she would have felt more touched by it, but for the common and ordinary accent used by Herbert's father. It occurred to me there was still a trace of haughtiness to be found in the girl, and that this needed to be erased before she could be reckoned good enough for my nephew. Millwood bought and presented to her, as acknowledgment of her attention, a brooch the like of which I had never seen before, and, with luck, will not see again; she was on the point of declining it, but a glance from me induced her to change the intention.
"You can either wear it," said Millwood, impressively, "on 'igh days, and Bank 'olidays, or you can put it by, and keep it in stock, so to speak, as family heirloom, to be 'anded down to your children, and their children's children after them." Muriel said she would take the second alternative, and that she was ever so much obliged. "Tell you what I did," he went on, emphasising the importance of the occasion, "I didn't consult me own taste; I tried to imagine what your selection would be, and d'rectly moment I set eyes on this, I knew I wasn't going far wrong!"
It was, I suppose, the sleeping upright in a chair at night that made my dreams more than ever twisted and perturbed; it may have been Cartwright's talk about his will that accounted for his presence in these imaginings. The number of times the Quartermaster-Sergeant was blown up by mines, or sniped by the enemy was past counting; it often proved an intense relief when Herbert awoke, and his call aroused me. Occasionally, when sleep was tardy in coming to him, Herbert spoke of his mother and his own early days, and the money I had spent on his education, and a dozen other subjects; he rarely alluded to Muriel, and when he did so, only in an incidental way. From which, I assumed that they had made terms with each other, and that peace was near. It seemed to me now that this was perhaps the best thing that could happen.
I should have done well to keep in mind the nursing instinct. In my own case, with the maids at Chislehurst, it had often happened that a particularly tiresome girl fell ill, and, at once, all my annoyance with her ceased, and I tended her as though she were my dearest friend. I have known mistresses who got rid of servants because they were so healthy as to prove wholly uninteresting. It is a virtue or a defect with women. And certainly it proved, in case of Muriel, that so soon as my nephew gave signs of recovery—I was glad for his sake, and not regretful for my own, for the want of proper rest was beginning to tell upon me, and I had no desire to escape the kind of flattery that the Wimpole Street gentleman had offered—so soon as this occurred, Muriel went up to the City, obtained employment in a forwarding office in Gracechurch Street at twenty-five shillings a week (the head clerk had been a season-ticket holder who shewed deference in her ticket-collector days), came back and reported the circumstance. This readiness for work in war time was no help to sentimental match-makers like myself. I took Herbert to task.
"I'm sorry, aunt," he said.
"You have oceans of pluck in other ways."
"Possibly, possibly. But it requires a special sort of courage to speak in that way to any one who is so far above—" He made an upward gesture with his hand.
"On any well regulated set of scales," I declared, warmly, "your qualities would considerably outbalance hers. As a fact, she is even now not nearly good enough for you."
"You expect life to resemble a Family Herald story," he said, smiling.
"Life might often do worse."