Charms -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"I've got a table in the corner over here," said little Mr. Brown to
Olwen through the buzz of talk that drowned all but the louder strains
of the band in the tea-room of the Regent Palace Hotel.
It was, as ever on a Sunday afternoon, a welter of khaki and girls. The
wicker chairs could not be seen for shrubberies of furs, coloured forest
of millinery; there was scarcely a space on the floor clear of muffs,
vanity bags, and feet; big feet in brown boots, little feet in
high-heeled coloured shoes; swathed feet in hospital wrappings. It took
Mr. Brown and Olwen minutes to steer their way through this labyrinth to
the further corner by a window that the little campaigner had marked
down and engaged just after lunch.
"Now, that's better," he said. "Nobody will come and walk over us here,
and nobody can hear what I say through this racket, not that I care if
they do.... Well, it's nice to see you again, Miss Olwen. I've been
fairly bursting to have a good old mag with you, ever since all this
happened.... What? Yes, two teas, please, Miss, if you can call 'em
teas. Spelling it with an E at the end is nearer the mark nowadays;
sort of reminding you of what once was tea. I've got some sugar here;
pinched some out of HER cupboard yesterday--good start, wasn't it? Are
you one of those people who miss lump sugar with every breath they draw,
Miss Olwen?"
Olwen smiled into the pink, pug-dog face that looked pinker, more
pertinacious than ever; the boy held his head even more assuredly in the
air, but his blue, prominent eyes were humble as well as joyous, and the
whole of him radiated amazement at Fortune as well as delight.
"Tell me about 'all this,'" Olwen begged, and little Mr. Brown zestfully
drawing in his chair and letting a pleased grin crumple his cheeks,
broke into his story....
Here and there Olwen interposed a question, a "Really," a "Why," a "What
did she say to that?" but for the rest she listened mutely as a woman
must, with the widening of her eyes, with a nod, a turn of the attentive
head, while the cheerful boy's voice--a thread in that closely woven
pattern of other voices all about them--ran on and on.
"It was only last Saturday it started. Imagine that! Seems ages ago to
me now, so much happening.... However, to begin at the beginning. I'd
been to my Board in the morning, and the silly old blighters had given
me another three weeks' leave before putting me on light duty. I was in
a taxi, coming away from them, because I was in a hurry, promised to
meet a fellow I knew for lunch at the Troc....
"By Jove, I never even rang him up after! I've only just thought of that
fellow who used to be in the Lace Department at that old show of mine,
and I hadn't seen him since '14. Too bad. I'll have to write him. Anyhow
I can't help it; absolutely everything seems to have gone straight out
of my head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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