"Going through it all over again when you've done it once before," continues this young philosopher. The Major thinks of asking why it should be rummer the second time than the first, but decides not to, and sips his toddy, and pats the hand that is under his. In a hazy, fossil-like way he perceives that to a young girl's mind the "rumness" of a second husband is exactly proportionate to the readiness of its acceptance of the first. Unity is just as intrinsic a quality of a first husband as the colour of his eyes or hair. Moreover, he is expected to outlive you. Above all, he is perfectly natural and a matter of course. We discern in all this a sneaking tribute to an idea of a hereafter; but the Major didn't go so far as that. "She looked very jolly over it," said he, retreating on generalities. "So did he." "Gaffer Fenwick? I should think so indeed! Well he might!" Then, after a moment's consideration: "He looked like my idea of Sir Richard Grenville. It's only an idea. I forget what he did. Elizabethan johnny." "What do you call him? Gaffer Fenwick? You're a nice, respectable young monkey! Well, he's not half a bad-looking fellow; well set up." But none of this, though good in itself, is what Sally sat down to talk about. A sudden change in her manner, a new earnestness, makes the Major stop an incipient yawn he is utilising as an exordium to a hint that we ought to go to bed, and become quite wakeful to say: "I will tell you all I can, my child." For Sally has thrust aside talk of the day's events, making no more of the wedding ceremony than of "Charley's Aunt," with: "_Why_ did my father and mother part? You _will_ tell me now, won't you, Major dear?" Lying was necessary--inevitable. But he would minimise it. There was always the resource of the legal fiction; all babes born in matrimony are legally the children of their mother's husband, _quand-meme_. He must make that his sheet-anchor.