I flung away in a pet. “You’re always laughing at me. By Heaven, I won’t be made a fool of by any girl!”
The corners of her eyes puckered to fresh laughter. “Troth, and you needna fear, Kenneth. No girl will can do that for you.”
“Well then,” I was beginning, half placated at the apparent flattery, but stopped with a sudden divination of her meaning. “You think me a fool already. Is that it?”
“I wass thinking that maybe you werena showing the good gumption this day, Mr. Kenneth Montagu.”
My pride and my misery shook hands. I came back to blurt out in boyish fashion,
“Let us not quarrel again to-day, Aileen, and—do not laugh at me these last few minutes. We march this afternoon. The order has been given out.”
Her hands dropped to her lap. Save where a spot of faint red burned in either cheek the colour ran out of her face. I drove my news home, playing for a sign of her love, desiring to reach the spring of her tears.
“Some of us will never cross the border twice,” I said.
My news had flung a shadow across the bright track of her gayety. ’Tis one thing for a high-spirited woman to buckle on the sword of her friend; ’tis another to see him go out to the fight.
“Let us not be thinking of that at all, Kenneth,” she cried.