He was so flabbergasted that he just blurted out the truth . ` Why , I thought you 'd be only too glad to get a chance to be married , ' he said . That was when I lost my head , Mrs. Dr. dear . Do you think I had a good excuse , when a Hun and a pacifist made such an insulting remark to me ? ` Go , ' I thundered , and I just caught up that iron pot . I could see that he thought I had suddenly gone insane , and I suppose he considered an iron pot full of boiling dye was a dangerous weapon in the hands of a lunatic . At any rate he went , and stood not upon the order of his going , as you saw for yourself . And I do not think we will see him back here proposing to us again in a hurry . No , I think he has learned that there is at least one single woman in Glen St. Mary who has no hankering to become Mrs. Whiskers-on-the-moon . '' CHAPTER XXVII WAITING Ingleside , 1st November 1917 `` It is November -- and the Glen is all grey and brown , except where the Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in the sombre landscape , although every other tree has shed its leaves . It has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late . The Caporetto disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much consolation out of the present state of affairs . The rest of us do n't try . Gertrude keeps saying desperately , ` They must not get Venice -- they must not get Venice , ' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent them . But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I can not see . Yet , as Susan fails not to point out , there was seemingly nothing to prevent them from getting to Paris in 1914 , yet they did not get it , and she affirms they shall not get Venice either . Oh , how I hope and pray they will not -- Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic . Although I 've never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did -- I 've always loved it -- it has always been to me ' a fairy city of the heart . ' Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter , who worshipped it . It was always one of his dreams to see Venice .
I remember we planned once -- down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke out -- XXXXX some time we would go together to see it and float in a gondola through its moonlit streets .
Although as at for from in like of that to