"Oh, my dear!" she choked. "There, that will make you think it was all
right. You shall never know--never--what really happened. Oh, Georgie,
Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living with
these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!"

Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with
pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty
story; sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.

Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been
so very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference
between that first portion so neatly penned--parti-coloured words
showing where the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled
and planned at every syllable--and this where emotion sped the
thoughts.



III.

"So that's all right" (she wrote), "and now we've only got to wait, a
few, few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does
love do to time, I wonder--whip or brake?--speed or pull? Georgie
mine, I feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them--
galloping to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all
flushed with the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go
thundering past and gazing along the road where soon I will see you--
nearer and nearer and nearer.