When I said, "Best girl?" he said proudly, "Only one, and we were to
have been married in January if this hadn't happened. Perhaps we may
yet, if we get home at Christmas, as they tell us we may."
I wondered who he meant by "they." The officers did not give any such
impression.
While I was gathering up towels and things before returning to the
house, this youngster advanced toward me, and said with a half-shy
smile, "I take it you're a lady."
I said I was glad he had noticed it--I did make such an effort.
"No, no," he said, "I'm not joking. I may not say it very well, but I
am quite serious. We all want to say to you that if it is war that
makes you and the women you live amongst so different from English
women, then all we can say is that the sooner England is invaded and
knows what it means to have a fighting army on her soil, and see her
fields devastated and her homes destroyed, the better it will be for the
race. You take my word for it, they have no notion of what war is like;
and there ain't no English woman of your class could have, or would
have, done for us what you have done this morning. Why, in England the
common soldier is the dirt under the feet of women like you.
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