At first the change seemed almost too great to be enjoyed. After the gloom, the semi-squalor, the hard toil of Love Lane, it was like an entrance into paradise. And when, at the end of that enchanted month of April, the Corporal joined her in the new abode, Melia's cup of happiness seemed quite perilously full.
That was a summer of magic days. For weeks on end they lived in a dream that had come true. To Melia the well appointed house, the beautiful surroundings, the bounty of her father were sources of perpetual amazement; to the Corporal the extensive garden, so gloriously stocked with flowers, fruit and vegetables, was a thing of delight; above all, the tower at the end of it, commanding on every hand his lovely native county, was a sacred thing, a temple of august memories.
The Corporal sunning himself and smoking his pipe by the south wall, where the peaches grew, could never have believed it to be possible. Melia, tending the flowerbeds and the grass, at the end of a not-too-strenuous summer's day, felt somehow that this was fairyland. Yes, their dreams of the long ago had more than come true. And, crowning consummation, in the eyes of each other, they were honored husband and cherished wife.
The Corporal was a long time getting well, but in that he was obeying instructions. Those most competent to speak of his case had told him not to be in a hurry; otherwise he might be permanently lame. And he was entitled to take his time. He had done his bit. Moreover, as his father-in-law assured him, it was the turn of younger men to "carry on." He had been through more than a year and a half in the trenches amid some of the cruelest fighting of the war; he was entitled to wear two stripes of gold braid on his sleeve. If any man could nurse a painful injury with a good conscience that man was Corporal Hollis.
In spite of searing memories, in spite of the whole nation's anxieties, in a measure made less, yet not wholly dispelled by the entrance into the war of a great Ally, the Corporal was allowed a taste of those half-forbidden fruits, Poetry and Romance. At such a time, perhaps, with the issue still undecided and the trials of the people growing more severe every week, the gilt on life's gingerbread should have been denied him altogether. And yet by dogged pluck he had earned that guerdon, and Melia by her simple faith was worthy to share it with him.
