All the storms of
fate could not destroy the glory of those few wonderful months. He
was laughing, so she heard, when he met his death. So would she,
in honour of him, go on laughing till she met hers.
"And that silly little fool, Phyllis, is still crying her eyes out
over Randall," she said. "Don't I think she was wrong in sending
him away? If she had married him she might have influenced him,
made him get a commission in the army. I've threatened to beat her
if she talks such nonsense. Why can't people take a line and stick
to it?"
"This isn't a world of Bettys, my dear," said I.
"Rubbish! The outrageous Mrs. Tufton's doing it."
Apparently she was. She followed Betty about as the lamb followed
Mary. Tufton, after a week or two at Wellington Barracks, had been
given sergeant's stripes and sent off with a draft to the front.
Betty's dramatic announcement of her widowhood seemed to have put
the fear of death into the woman's soul. As soon as her husband
landed in France she went scrupulously through the closely printed
casualty lists of non-commissioned officers and men in The Daily
Mail, in awful dread lest she should see her husband's name.
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