I should have preferred that we had gone on with our talk, but I knew enough about men to be aware that, with many, cricket comes ahead of everything else. Cartwright enjoyed himself. The ground was not too good, but he bowled well, and took wickets, and made catches, and when the lads found that he did not propose to take his turn with the bat, their admiration for him became frank and genuine. And I felt interested for a time to watch the boyish side of his nature, but only for a time, and I was not sorry when one of the keepers came along, and pointed out the date was not sufficiently advanced to make the playing of the game legal and permissible on open spaces. It looked as though our walk and our conversation could now be resumed, but the keeper had two sons out in Flanders and—well, people are very sarcastic at times about the way women-folk chatter, but when you get men discussing affairs, it is difficult to guess when they will stop, and not easy to find a method of arresting the debate. I strolled off, found the boys, and persuaded them to set up their wickets once more. Returning, I pointed out to the keeper that his authority was being derided. He hurried away.
"Thought you were never going to finish your cackle," I remarked to the Quartermaster-Sergeant. "What time do you want to be starting for home?"
"Tired of my company already?"
"Of course not. Only that there are your parents to be considered."
"For one day at least," he announced, "I'm going to consider myself. And you. We're going to a theatre together. A theatre up in town."
He went on first to choose a play, and arrange about seats; I called at London Street, where Millwood grumbled at my long absence, and mentioned that he had never before seen me with such a colour. "Makes you look like I don't know what!" he declared. "And mind you don't go getting yourself talked about, Mary Weston. Greenwich is a rare place for gossip."
As though I cared! As though any woman would have cared, with the prospect of going to a theatre, and sitting next to a soldier man, home on leave, after doing fine work for his country, and soon going out to do more!
I could tell you everything about the play, and could give you all the particulars of the dresses (I did furnish these details the next day, first to Peter at the shop, and afterwards to Miss Katherine at Gloucester Place). The incident worth recording here is that when my Quartermaster-Sergeant Cartwright saw me off at Charing Cross station that night by the eleven-thirty train, we shook hands through the open window of the railway carriage, and he promised to see me again before he went out. And, without saying "By your leave!" or "Hope you don't object!" or any remark of the kind, he, as the train moved out, kissed me.