The sergeant, who had been making sympathetic noises during this tirade, here took the opportunity to murmur deferentially: “I dare say you will be seeing the last of it before long, sir. I presume the young lady will take it with her when she marries.”

“Oh, she told you she was going to get married, did she?” asked the general.

“Yes, sir. But perhaps I oughtn’t to have mentioned it.”

“God bless my soul, why not? I approve of the affair entirely. She might have done better for herself, I suppose, if she’d wanted to, but Harper is a very decent young fellow—I knew his father well—very decent people—quite a sahib in fact—oh, I approve, absolutely! Though, mind you, the young people nowadays manage these affairs very differently from what they did when I was their age. In those days no young man would go near a girl’s parents until he was in a position to keep her. Nowadays they all seem to think they can rush into an engagement without any prospects at all. Then they have to wait, and waiting’s a ticklish business for all concerned—unsettles them, if you, follow me.”

“Quite so, sir,” the sergeant agreed. “I’ve a daughter at home waiting to be married, and I know what it’s like.”

“You understand, then. Well, it seems to be all fixed up now. Not such a long wait as I feared. They’ve got round the difficulty somehow—heaven knows how. That’s the young people of today again, all over. Secrets, you know. In my young days it was: what’s your income, and how do you earn it? Nowadays it’s: I can keep your daughter and don’t you ask any questions. Still, I suppose we should be satisfied even with that, as things go. We old ’uns aren’t treated with the respect we used to get, and that’s a fact.”

“Quite so, sir,” the sergeant said again.

The general looked up, quite surprised to find that he had been addressing a policeman, and not, as he had imagined in the oblivion induced by eloquence, a crony in his club.

“Quite so,” he repeated fiercely.

“You’ll be sorry to lose her, sir, no doubt,” added the sergeant. “I understand they are to live out of England.”

“The young fellow means to go out to Kenya, he tells me,” said the general. “Got the offer of a partnership in a farm there. And a very good life for a young man—I don’t approve of them hanging about in the old country when there’s Empire-building to be done elsewhere.”

He stopped suddenly, as though conscious that he had been talking a good deal. “Well, I mustn’t keep you,” he said, nodded curtly and strode into the house.