“I expect him home tonight. He’s been wounded, you know, and we’ve been applying for him home. He was home about six weeks ago—he’s been in Scotland since then. Oh, he was wounded in the leg. Yes, he’s all right, a great strapping fellow. But he’s lame, he limps a bit. He expects he’ll get his discharge—but I don’t think he will. We married? We’ve been married six years—and he joined up the first day of the war. Oh, he thought he’d like the life. He’d been through the South African War. No, he was sick of it, fed up. I’m living with his father and mother—I’ve no home of my own now. My people had a big farm—over a thousand acres—in Oxfordshire. Not like here—no. Oh, they’re very good to me, his father and mother. Oh, yes, they couldn’t be better. They think more of me than of their own daughters. But it’s not like being in a place of your own, is it? You can’t _really_ do as you like. No, there’s only me and his father and mother at home. Before the war? Oh, he was anything. He’s had a good education—but he liked the farming better. Then he was a chauffeur. That’s how he knew French. He was driving a gentleman in France for a long time—” At this point the peacocks came round the corner on a puff of wind. “Hello, Joey!” she called, and one of the birds came forward, on delicate legs. Its grey speckled back was very elegant, it rolled its full, dark-blue neck as it moved to her. She crouched down. “Joey, dear,” she said, in an odd, saturnine caressive voice, “you’re bound to find me, aren’t you?” She put her face forward, and the bird rolled his neck, almost touching her face with his beak, as if kissing her. “He loves you,” I said. She twisted her face up at me with a laugh. “Yes,” she said, “he loves me, Joey does,”—then, to the bird—“and I love Joey, don’t I. I _do_ love Joey.” And she smoothed his feathers for a moment. Then she rose, saying: “He’s an affectionate bird.” I smiled at the roll of her “bir-rrd’. “Oh, yes, he is,” she protested. “He came with me from my home seven years ago. Those others are his descendants—but they’re not like Joey—_are they, dee-urr?_” Her voice rose at the end with a witch-like cry. Then she forgot the birds in the cart-shed and turned to business again. “Won’t you read that letter?” she said. “Read it, so that I know what it says.” “It’s rather behind his back,” I said. “Oh, never mind him,” she cried. “He’s been behind my back long enough—all these four years. If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he wouldn’t have cause to grumble. You read me what it says.” Now I felt a distinct reluctance to do as she bid, and yet I began—“My dear Alfred.” “I guessed that much,” she said. “Eliza’s dear Alfred.” She laughed. “How do you say it in French? _Eliza?_” I told her, and she repeated the name with great contempt—_Élise_. “Go on,” she said. “You’re not reading.” So I began—“I have been thinking of you sometimes—have you been thinking of me?”—