Now here was a piece of news, all flung at my head in a couple of minutes.  The day after to-morrow!  I asked for the reason of this disconcerting suddenness.

“He’s going out next week.”

“My dear,” said I, “I have known you for a very long time—­and I suppose it’s because I’m such a very old friend that you’ve come to tell me all about it.  So I can talk to you frankly.  Have you considered the terrible chances of this war?  Heaven knows what may happen.  He may be killed.”

“That’s why I’m marrying him,” she said.

There was a little pause.  For the moment I had nothing to say, as I was busily searching for her point of view.  Then, with pauses between each sentence, she went on:—­

“He asked me two months ago, and again a month ago.  I told him to put such ideas out of his head.  Yesterday he told me they were off to the front and said what a wonderful help it would be to him if he could carry away some hope of my love.  So I gave it to him.”—­ She threw back her head and looked at me, with flushed cheeks.  “The love, not the hope.”

“I don’t think it was right of him to press for an immediate marriage,” said I, in a grandfatherly way—­though God knows if I had been mad for a girl I should have done the same myself when I was young.

“He didn’t” said Betty, coolly.  “It was all my doing.  I fixed it up there and then.  Looked up Whitaker’s Almanack for the necessary information, and sent him off to get a special license.”

I nodded a non-committal head.  It all seemed rather mad.  Betty rose and from her graceful height gazed down on me.

“If you don’t look more cheerful, Major, I shall cry.  I’ve never done so yet, but I’m sure I’ve got it in me.”

I stretched out my hand.  She took it, and, still holding it, seated herself on a footstool close to my chair.

“There are such a lot of things that occur to me,” I said.  “Things that your poor mother, if she were alive, would be more fitted to touch on than myself.”

“Such as—­”

She knelt by me and gave me both her hands.  It was a pretty way she had.  She had begun it soon after her head overtopped mine in my eternal wheelbarrow.  There was a little mockery in her eyes.

“Well—­” said I.  “You know what marriage means.  There is the question of children.”

She broke into frank laughter.

“My darling Majy—­” That is the penalty one pays for admitting irresponsible modern young people into one’s intimacy.  They miscall one abominably.  I thought she had outgrown this childish, though affectionate appellation of disrespect.  “My darling Majy!” she said.  “Children!  How many do you think I’m going to have?”

I was taken aback.  There was this pure, proud, laughing young face a foot away from me.  I said in desperation:—­