oth of them, tell her all
about himself, and let her share everything with him in imagination.
She also expressed her affection for him in shy and slangy terms.

Doggie wrote regularly. His letters were as shy and conveyed less
information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation
Spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed
himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in
the head. He was better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and
had allowed him two or three slack days. The first time he had
unaccountably fainted; but he had seen some of the men do the same,
and the doctor had assured him that it had nothing to do with
cowardice. He had gone for a route march and had returned a dusty lump
of fatigue. But after having shaken the dust out of his
moustache--Doggie had a playful turn of phrase now and then--and drunk
a quart of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained hard,
and they were all but washed out of the huts. It was a very strange
life--one which he never dreamed could have existed. "Fancy me," he
wrote, "glad to sleep on a drenched bed!" There was the riding-school.
Why hadn't he learned to ride as a boy? He had been told that the
horse was a noble animal and the friend of man. He was afraid he would
return to his dear Peggy with many of his young illusions shattered.
The horse was the most ignoble, malevolent beast that ever walked,
except the sergeant-major in the riding-school. Peggy was filled with
admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships. It was real
courage. His letters contained simple statements of fact, but not a
word of complaint. On the other hand, they were not ebullient with
joy; but then, Peggy reflected, there was not much to be joyous about
in a ramshackle hut on Salisbury Plain. "Dear old thing," she would
write, "although you don't grouse, I know you must be having a pretty
thin time. But you're bucking up splendidly, and when you get your
leave I'll do a girl's very d----dest (don't be shocked; but I'm sure
you're learning far worse language in the Army) to make it up to you."
Her heart was very full of him.

Then there came a time when his letters grew rarer and shorter. At
last they ceased altogether. After a week's waiting she sent an
anxious telegram. The answer came back. "Quite well. Will write soon."
She waited. He did not write. One evening an unstamped envelope,
addressed to her in a feminine