Free Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D. E. Stevenson Page A

bed. We meet Commander Grey and Mrs. Winthrop coming downstairs and hide behind a curtain till they pass. Tim says if he were David Winthrop he would give his wife a good beating.
    Our room looks very comfortable and bed most inviting – a glance in the mirror convinces me that Tim is right about my appearance.
    Thirty-first January
    Wake very late after last night’s revels. The sun is shining and everything looks and feels very Sundayish. Point out to Tim the strange fact (which has just struck me) that even the trees look like Sunday. Tim says they look the same as they did yesterday to him.
    Breakfast in our room as before – it feels like months since yesterday morning. Tim says if he lived here long he would become a Socialist. Luxury is enervating and isn’t it dreadful to think there are people in the world actually starving? Reply that I am – and ask him to pass the marmalade.
    Tim says he doesn’t know why I can never be serious for two minutes. Feel that late hours do not really agree with Tim’s constitution (have noticed the same thing before) whereas I am always particularly bright and chirpy after a dance.
    Major Morley knocks on the door and asks if Tim would like to come for a ride this morning as we need not start for Biddington until after lunch. Tim agrees joyfully and says no more about turning Socialist.
    I go downstairs to see them start and find Lady Morley is going to church. Offer to accompany her which pleases her immensely. No other guests have appeared as yet, probably due to their exertions of last night.
    Very pretty walk across the fields, church bells in the distance play hymns slightly out of tune. Find that Lady M. was donor of bells (fortunately before I remarked upon their dissonance).
    Lady Morley says that the reason for all the unrest and troubles of modern life is because people do not go to church regularly. She hopes I will like Mr. Bridge, he is a very earnest man, – and thoroughly orthodox. The choir is really quite good church music is so uplifting when suitably rendered.
    Here we enter a field of very fierce-looking animals which I feel sure must be bulls, and I hear no more of my companion’s remarks until we have negotiated it safely. By this time Lady M. seems to have arrived at the subject of her son. She asks how I think Tony is looking. The dear boy works so hard. She thinks it is a shame the way all the work of the battalion is pushed on to Tony’s shoulders. (This idea is so entirely new to me that I find some difficulty in making a suitable reply.)
    We climb over a style and Lady Morley says – rather breathlessly that real friendship between a man and a woman is so – – ennobling don’t I agree? She actually waits for an answer to this totally irrelevant question so I gather my scattered wits and reply that ‘one meets it so seldom’ a cliché which I feel sure will appeal to Lady Morley.
    â€˜Of course it must be a married woman,’ Lady Morley says. I reply vaguely that I suppose it must, and hasten forward to open the lych-gate for her.
    A crowd of villagers in the churchyard reply respectfully to Lady Morley’s greetings and questions concerning Little Harry’s tonsils and Maud’s influenza. Then I find myself sailing up the aisle in Lady Morley’s wake to the front pew where we are fastened in securely by a carved door. Am conscious of eyes boring into my back and wonder what I shall do if I feel unwell, as door seems to be bolted on the outside. Decide that there is no reason why I should feel unwell and strive to forget about it and to fix my attention on the service.
    Mr. Bridge delivers himself of a sermon based upon Noah, and draws comparisons between flood, and present-day conditions of Europe. Am interested to observe large tomb with lifesize figure of a crusading Morley reclining on the top.
    After the service we meet a great many people to whom Lady Morley chats in a