nt 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:--

"You know very well what I mean, young woman. I want to put things
clearly before you--" It is the most difficult thing in the world for a
man--even without legs--to talk straight about the facts of life to a
young girl. He has no idea how much she knows about them and how much
she doesn't. To tear away veils a