LXXVIII
Vincent Frank to Josey Raby
Darling Josey,—I hated having to telegraph, but there was nothing else to do.
You know, my sweet, that part of a man’s job is to look after his woman, and I can’t feel that we should be playing the game to go off like this. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that your father knows what he is saying and that we ought to wait. After all, impossible though they are, fathers have got some kind of right to put their damned old trotters down now and then, and especially when one is still eating from their hands. Besides, I don’t know from day to day what I am going to do—the whole force is in such a muddle with Winston tinkering at it—and it wouldn’t be playing the game to marry now. Three years isn’t such a terrible long time and I may be an Air-Marshal by then, who knows? After all, we must live, and I haven’t got a bean beyond my rotten pay, and if your father turns us down, where are we? Echo answers where. Especially as my people have always set their hearts on my marrying that red-headed horror I showed you in the distance at the Russian Ballet.
No, my angel darling sphinx, the sweetest thing ever made or dreamt of, let us be sensible, much as it goes against the grain, and wait. I’ve got my eye on an absolutely topping engagement ring in Regent Street, which shall be yours in a fortnight from to-day and we’ll have the most gorgeous fun.—Your grovelling lover,
Vin.