'Won't you kiss her?' asked Alice. 'You haven't kissed her yet, and
she is used to so much affection.'

'I don't think I could take such an advantage of her,' I said.

They looked at each other, and Mrs. Farnham said that I was plainly
worn out. I mustn't sit up to prayers.

If I had been given anything like reasonable time I might have made
a fight for it, but four weeks--it took a month each way in those
days--was too absurdly little; I could do nothing. But I would not
stay at mamma's. It was more than I would ask of myself, that daily
disappointment under the mask of gratified discovery, for long.

I spent an approving, unnatural week, in my farcical character,
bridling my resentment and hiding my mortification with pretty
phrases; and then I went up to town and drowned my sorrows in the
summer sales. I took John with me. I may have been Cecily's mother
in theory, but I was John's wife in fact.

We went back to the frontier, and the regiment saw a lot of service.
That meant medals and fun for my husband, but economy and anxiety
for me, though I managed to be allowed as close to the firing line
as any woman.

Once the Colonel's wife and I, sitting in Fort Samila, actually
heard the rifles of a punitive expedition cracking on the other side
of the river--that was a bad moment. My man came in after fifteen
hours' fighting, and went sound asleep, sitting before his food with
his knife and fork in his hands. But service makes heavy demands