I'm not such a fool as you may have thought me, Major," he said, forgetful of his humble rank.

"Suppose I had got a commission and married her.

Suppose I had been kept at home and never gone out and never seen a shot fired, like heaps of other fellows, or suppose I had taken the line I had marked out--do you think we should have been assured a happy life?
Not a bit of it.

We might have been happy for twenty years.

And then--women are women and can't help themselves--the old word--by George, sir, she spat it at me from a festering sore in her very soul--the old word would have rankled all the time, and some stupid quarrel having arisen, she would have spat it at me again.