"Friendship for a young lady, mum? What? Master Roland? Well, I never did! What the boys is coming to in this war, I don't know. And there's the newspapers all advising 'em to get married before they go out. Mischievous nonsense, I call it. What's the good of getting married to a man who may leave you a widow inside of a month? Two or three girls I know have just done that, for the sake of getting the men's money. Downright mean, I call it, and hard on the taxpayers that have got to keep the soldiers' widows and orphans; and so I told 'em. Of course, it's different for your sort; but it's not right for the likes of us. It's not my idea of gettin' married, anyhow, and so I told my young man when he was going out." "But wouldn't you feel more sure of him, Joanna, if he'd married you? You see, if he were your husband, and not only just your lover, you'd know that you could trust him out there, and that he wouldn't be flirting with French girls." But Joanna laughed doubtfully. "I don't see as that follows, mum. 'Usbands flirts just as much as lovers, from what I've seen. And I'm not afraid of my young man flirting, anyhow, because he isn't the sort. You see, he never calls me darling in his letters, or anything like that. If he was to do that kind of thing, then I should know that he was very likely carrying on with other girls. But he only puts in a 'dear' now and then, and that's the sort that you can trust." Wise philosopher of the kitchen! If only all women would judge their men as truthfully. "But to think of Master Roland!" the cook began again. Yes, to think of Little Yeogh Wough beginning to care for any girl! As I went on rummaging in the wardrobe, I came across a little loose pile of letters which he had sent back from the Front. I should never dream in the ordinary way of reading anybody else's letters--I carefully avoid looking into his private drawer in this same piece of furniture--but it happens that he told me playfully that I could read any of the letters in this particular little pile, if I chose. The first two were from myself to him. Of course I might look at those. They bore signs of violent usage in the opening. I have a habit of fastening down the flaps of my envelopes with stickphast, and then making them still more secure by sitting on the letters in a book. So Little Yeogh Wough had often told me that, whenever he saw a letter of mine arriving, he sent his soldier servant for an entrenching tool to open it with. Not that he had any right to tease me on this matter. For he followed the same plan himself in fastening letters. He always used stickphast and he always sat on the missives in a book. Whenever we bought a book that we did not enjoy, we took it to sit on as a correspondence flattener. "Don't you ever believe anybody who says they've opened by mistake any letter that you'd written," Little Yeogh Wough said to me once. "It's a sheer impossibility."