Then I took up another letter from the pile--a letter with a London postmark and with a Hammersmith address for its heading. "What a common-looking, sloppy handwriting!" I thought as I looked at it. And the thing began: "You dear pigeon of a Roly." And it was signed: "Your duck of a Queenie." And underneath the "Queenie" there were actually crosses for kisses, as if the letter were from a tweenymaid! I got a shock. Shivers went down my back. What vulgar creature could this be who had dared to make so free with the purest-minded and least vulgar boy in all the world? Who was she that had taken advantage of him like this, just because he was at large and in khaki? CHAPTER V GOOD DAYS AND GOOD NIGHTS I know exactly the kind of woman this is. Even in my indignation, I could not help half-smiling as I remembered certain angry complaints made by a fashionable mother whom I had met at a War charity meeting. "It really is a shame that you can't let your fresh-minded boy go out into the world without his coming across snare-laying women," she had burst out confidentially. "The poor silly fellows get quite led astray by some of these girls that they meet where they're billeted--shoddy girls with a cheap prettiness and cheap little openwork stockings and flashy haircombs, and imitation jewellery, and no minds or souls. You know the sort. They're always hankering after small outings and excitements, and, of course, they would all like to catch baby second lieutenants, who may one day be something in the world." She had been so much upset, this fashionable mother, that I knew she must have suffered. "What a pity that this 'Queenie' of Hammersmith doesn't know better when she's wasting her time!" I thought. "Why couldn't she see that her 'Roly' might love a woman a hundred times worse than she is, but he wouldn't love her? Anyhow, he ought to have burnt her silly letter. I will see that he burns it when he comes back. I will not have such stuff defiling this consecrated room.... And yet--I wonder if it is the same charm in him that makes both Queenie and me adore him!" For it was certainly not because he was my son that I was wrapped up in him. "Why ever do you think such a heap of me?" he had asked me more than once. And I had always answered him: "Because, my boy, you are that strangest and most wonderful thing in all the world--an interesting young man. As a rule, the masculine person isn't worth taking the least notice of till he's thirty--except for athletics. I put that down in a diary once when I was a little girl and I should put the same thing down now. It quite takes one's breath away to find a boy who is athletic and fascinating at the same time. One feels that a drum ought to be beaten through the town. Do you know, you will even be one of the few persons whose weddings are not dull. And weddings, as a rule, are the dullest things that ever happen." I had spoken so lightly and yet I had meant every word that I had said.