I may have been Cecily's mother in theory, but I was John's wife in fact.
We went back to the frontier, and the regiment saw a lot of service.
That meant medals and fun for my husband, but economy and anxiety for me, though I managed to be allowed as close to the firing line as any woman.
Once the Colonel's wife and I, sitting in Fort Samila, actually heard the rifles of a punitive expedition cracking on the other side of the river--that was a bad moment.

My man came in after fifteen hours' fighting, and went sound asleep, sitting before his food with his knife and fork in his hands.

But service makes heavy demands besides those on your wife's nerves.

We had saved two thousand rupees, I remember, against another run home, and it all went like powder, in the Mirzai expedition; and the run home diminished to a month in a boarding-house in the hills.
Meanwhile, however, we had begun to correspond with our daughter, in large round words of one syllable, behind which, of course, was plain the patient guiding hand of Aunt Emma.

One could hear Aunt Emma suggesting what would be nice to say, trying to instil a little pale affection for the far-off papa and mamma.