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All Marmaduke could see of his doggie now was his little tail like a sausage. The rest of him was under the tent. Thump-thump-thump went the tail. And Marmaduke knew it must be pretty nice inside. Then the tail, too, disappeared. So down on his stomach went the little boy and crawled right in after his doggie. The tent had several big rooms and he was in one of them.
"My God!" cried Doggie, "haven't I thought of it till I'm half mad? It would be just as you say unendurable." He began to pace the room again. "And I can't go to France. It would be just the same as England. Every one would be looking white feathers at me. The only thing I can do is to go out of the world. I'm not fit for it. Oh, I don't mean suicide. I've not enough pluck. That's off.
Doggie, the lightest-hearted private in the British Army, danced, in a metaphorical sense, back to London, where he stayed for the rest of his leave at his rooms in Woburn Place; took his wholesome fill of theatres and music-halls, going to those parts of the house where Tommies congregate; and bought an old Crown Derby dinner service as a wedding present for Peggy and Oliver, a tortoise-shell-fitted dressing-case for Peggy, and for Oliver a magnificent gold watch that was an encyclopædia of current information.
He must accept the situation which she decreed. He owed that to her loyalty. But how to continue the correspondence? It was hard enough to write from Salisbury Plain; from here it was well-nigh impossible. Thus was Doggie brought up against a New Problem. He struggled desperately to defer its solution.
We'll get married and have a little cottage in a little town, the way the song says that we heard together at the Comedy on my last leave. You remember how it goes. 'And we'll have a little mistress in a silken gown. A little doggie, a little cat, A little doorstep, with WELCOME on the mat. "My dearest sweetheart, I love you. "Yours, in the pink, etc." Tabs looked up.
Doggie jumped up and pointed to him. "Look here, Peggy. It's the guard-room for me." Oliver laughed. "Where the dinner kit I bought when I came home is now, God only can tell." He turned to Peggy. "I did change, you know." "That's the pull of being a beastly Major," said Doggie. "They have heaps of suits. On the march, there are motor-lorries full of them. It's the scandal of the army.
"Don't you know what a sweet cracker is?" asked the doggie, who was much surprised. "No, I don't," declared Sammie. "Well, you ought to. I'm astonished at you. It's sweet, and it's a cracker, that's all I can tell you. You ought to know such things yourself." "Look here!" cried Sammie, who thought the doggie was trying to show how smart it was, "do you know what molasses carrots are?"
He is no longer one of those who "look before and after and pine for what is not". He is a "good doggie", and when you pat him on the head he rubs against you and whines affectionately. Poor, mad Jimmie Higgins will never again trouble his country; but Jimmie's friends and partisans, who know the story of his experiences, cannot be thus lightly dismissed by Society.
But Doggie crept out of bed and put on a violet dressing-gown that clashed horribly with his pink pyjamas, and wandered like a man in a nightmare to his breakfast. But he could not eat. He swallowed a cup of coffee and sought refuge in his own room. He was frightened. Horribly frightened, caught in a net from which there was no escape not the tiniest break of a mesh.
Then Doggie suddenly laughed out loud and took her by the shoulders in a grasp rougher than she had ever dreamed to lie in the strength or nature of Marmaduke Trevor, and kissed her the heartiest, honestest kiss she had ever had from man, and rushed out of the room. Presently he returned, dragging with him the disconsolate Major. "Here," said he, "fix it up between you.
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