Portly Mr. Letham, carried away by the grip of the thing, drew himself up and squared his shoulders. He repeated "'This way, Sergeant-major!'" and stuck, and stopped, and swallowed, and turned shining eyes on his wife (she stood there brooding at him) and exclaimed: "Can't you imagine it, Nellie? Listen: '_This way, Sergeant-major!' he shouted, jumped on his feet, gave a hand to his sergeant; cried 'Come on! Come on! Whoop! Forward! Forward!' and then staggered, twisted a bit on his toes, dropped. I saw another officer-boy jump up to him with 'Burdon! Burdon, old buck, have you got it?'..._" Portly Mr. Letham's voice cracked off into a high squeak, and he lowered the paper and said huskily: "I say, Nellie, eh? I say, Nellie, though? That's the stuff, eh? Poor boy! Brave boy!" With unseeing eyes he blinked a moment at his wife's face. Brooding, she watched him. Then he turned to the washstand and began to remove the signs of shaving from his cheeks, holding the sponge scarcely above the water as he squeezed it out, as though a noise were unseemly in the presence of the scene his thoughts pictured. And she just stood there, that brooding look upon her face. Ah! again! He was off again! "And his grandmother," Mr. Letham said, wiping his face in a towel, sniffing a little, paying particular attention to the drying of his eyes. "I say, Nellie, his poor grandmother, eh? How she will be suffering! Think of her picking up her paper and reading that! ... Only saw him once," he mumbled on, brushing his thin hair. "Took him across town when he was going home for his first holidays from Eton. Remember it like yesterday. I remember--" It was the end of her endurance; she could stand no more of it. "Oh, Maurice!" she broke out; "oh, Maurice, for goodness' sake!" Mr. Letham turned to her in a puzzled way. He held a hair brush in either hand at the level of his ears and stared at her from between them: "Why, Nellie--" he began; "what--what's up, old girl?" She struck her hands sharply together. "Oh, you go on, you go on, you go on!" she cried. "You make me--don't you understand? Can't you understand? I thought that when I brought you this news you'd be as excited as I was. Instead--instead--" She broke off and changed her tone. "Oh, do go on brushing your hair. For goodness' sake don't stand staring at me like that!" He obeyed in his slowish way. "Well, upon my soul, I don't quite understand, old girl," he said perplexedly. "That's what I'm telling you," she cried sharply and suddenly. "You don't. You go on, you go on!"