It
needs men like you. Come, pull yourself together and show a little
pluck." She laughed.
"I'll try," he promised, "but it won't be any use; I shall drift about
the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my
footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office;
and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval or some
old fool will pat me on the shoulder and I shall sneak in and it will
close behind me. It must be fine to have courage."
He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his
regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders. But there would
have been no sense in her replying to that last.
She lingered in the street by herself, a little time, after he had turned
the corner. It had been a house of sorrow and disappointment to her; but
so also she had dreamed her dreams there, seen her visions. She had
never made much headway with her landlord and her landlady: a worthy
couple, who had proved most excellent servants, but who prided
themselves, to use their own expression, on knowing their place and
keeping themselves to themselves.
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