“You know that I _do_ what I think I’ll do—you spoke of my ‘steel-straight directness and sweet brave will’ in the poem you were making about me, you poor funny old boy, when you vanished, and which I found in your room when I went there to cry, (Oh, _how_ I cried when I found your odds and ends of verse about me there—I really did think my heart was ‘broken’ in actual fact.) Don’t make me suffer any more, darling. I’m sure your Colonel will be sweet about it and give us a nice little house all to ourselves, now he has seen what a splendid soldier you are. If you stick to your folly about ‘disgrace’ I need not tell him our names and Grumper couldn’t take me away from you, even if he ever found out where we were. “I could go on writing all night, darling, but I’ll only just say again _I am going to marry you and take care of you, Dam, in the army or out of it._ “Your fiancee and friend, “LUCILLE GAVESTONE.” Dam groaned aloud. “Four o’ rum ’ot, is wot _you_ want, mate, for that,” said the industrious self-improver at the shelf-table. “Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an’ rine las’ night…. I’d give a ’ogs’ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin’ Reggilashuns _‘nor must bloomin’ sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or even in moderate-weather’_ a doin’ of it ’isself in ’is bloomin’ ‘moderate weather’ with water a runnin’ down ’is back, an’ ’is feet froze into a puddle, an’ the fog a chokin’ of ’im, an’ ’is blighted carbine feelin’ like a yard o’ bad ice—an’ then find the bloomin’ winder above ’is bed been opened by some kind bloke an’ ’is bed a blasted swamp… Yus—you ’ave four o’ rum ’ot and you’ll feel like the bloomin’ ’Ouse o’ Lords. Then ’ave a Livin’stone Rouser.” “Oh, shut up,” said Dam, cursing the Bathos of Things and returning to the beginning of Lucille’s letter.