"This isn't from Connie! What do you mean? Where's Connie? What have you done with her?"
"Read yon," said Ben.
After one glance at his set face, she read:
Dear old girl,
There ain't no flies round Christmas time in Blighty, but there's jolly well nothing else in this old hole. It's as hot as—well any place we specially used to think of as being hot. I say, Kiddo, who's been having you on that I'm engaged? Your stately letter—written by the way some time in August—has been chasing me across the desert sands and under the deodar and all the rest of it until it knocked the portals of my heart (Good that? What?) about—well may be—two months ago. Who sprung that yarn on to you about Cissie Bradfield? It's old Ernest, my brother, she collared. They were married last July. I can't think how you made the mistake because Alice knows Cissie and knew all about it. If you'd asked her she could have told you. We have the same initials of course. Honest, Kiddo, I'm no hand at letter writing and time dashes by here, but you're barking up the wrong tree this time. You must know that you are the only girl in the world as far as I am concerned. Rumour hath it that in another two months we may get leave and then what about another room at Scarshaven Hotel and you "on a visit to your friends at Buxton," eh? I'm not the marrying sort you know, but sometimes I think that when this war's over, I'd like to settle down. How would the idea of being Mrs. E. F. seem to you, old girl? Not much in your line, what?
Anyway don't forget me,
Yours to a cinder,
Eric.
She read twice through this strange production, straining her eyes to decipher the crude, boyish writing. Then she looked at Ben. "I don't understand, what does it mean?" she said.
"Don't you? Don't you? Ay, but you do. You Hammonds, you're all alike, you, you——"