She--you know what women are.'
'Yes, yes.'
'You needn't mention it to mother.'
'I won't.' Mr. Torrance is elated to share a secret with Roger about
which mother is not to know. 'Think your mother and I are an aged pair,
Roger?'
'I never--of course you are not young.'
'How long have you known that? I mean, it's true--but I didn't know it
till quite lately.'
'That you're old?'
'Hang it, Roger, not so bad as that--elderly. This will stagger you; but
I assure you that until the other day I jogged along thinking of myself
as on the whole still one of the juveniles.' He makes a wry face. 'I
crossed the bridge, Roger, without knowing it.'
'What made you know?'
'What makes us know all the new things, Roger?--the war. I'll tell you
a secret. When we realised in August of 1914 that myriads of us were to
be needed, my first thought wasn't that I had a son, but that I must get
fit myself.'
'You!'
'Funny, isn't it?' says Mr. Torrance quite nastily. 'But, as I tell you,
I didn't know I had ceased to be young, I went into Regent's Park and
tried to run a mile.
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