It was on Monday, January 11, 1915. He had been reading _The Daily
Mail_ and suddenly he banged it down. "You can't believe what you see
in the papers," he said.
"Since when?" I asked.
"I suppose always," he said, "but particularly to-day."
He was a nice young soldier on his way back to his camp after a
holiday, and I guessed him, before he enlisted in KITCHENER'S army, to
have been a provincial clerk or a salesman of some kind.
"Yes," he said; "and I know someone else who'll say the same when she
sees it."
"Sees what?" I asked.
He found a paragraph in the paper--towards the foot of the Society
column--and placed his thumb on it.
"This," he said.
"Mayn't I see?" I asked.
He kept his thumb there.
"Yes, and her mother will have something to say to it too," he went
on, "and"--he chuckled richly--"my mother too. The idea!"
"Mayn't I see it?" I asked again.
"As if nobody in this world mattered but toffs," he said. "Perhaps
they did once; but they're not going to for ever, I can tell you."
"You're a Socialist?" I suggested.
"No, I'm not," he said. "I don't hold with Socialism. But I'm sure
after this war's over toffs aren't going to be quite everything that
they were before it began.
"The cheek of it!" he continued, with another glance at the paper.
"Lumme, I'd like to be there when she lets herself go!"
"Your mother?" I said.
"No, I didn't mean her just then; but she'd be all right to listen to,
too. She can't half speak her mind! No, I meant my fiancy. I've just
left her; been there for Sunday."
"Have you been engaged long?" I asked.
He laughed. "No," he said. "That's the point. We only got engaged this
year. I'd courted her a long time, but it wasn't till New Year's day
that we fixed it up."
"I congratulate you," I said, "and her too. I think she's lucky to
have a soldier for her husband. I hope you're both very happy."
"Happy!" he said; "I should think we were. That's what makes me so
disgusted with this paper. Look at it."
At last he removed his thumb and showed me a paragraph beginning with
the words, "The first interesting engagement of the New Year is that
between Captain Dudley Hornby and Lady Marjorie Feilding."
"The 'first'!" he said scornfully. "The 'first'! She and her mother on
that," he chuckled, "and my mother to help them! (We live close by).
My, I wish I could be there to hear it. Give it me back, please; I
must mark it and post it. What a time they'll have!"