But it wasn't
an extravagance.
Three weeks before Colonel Powys had written to Colonel
Ashburnham:
"I say, Harry, couldn't your Edward marry one of my girls? It
would be a god-send to me, for I'm at the end of my tether and,
once one girl begins to go off, the rest of them will follow." He
went on to say that all his daughters were tall, upstanding,
clean-limbed and absolutely pure, and he reminded Colonel
Ashburnham that, they having been married on the same day,
though in different churches, since the one was a Catholic and the
other an Anglican--they had said to each other, the night before,
that, when the time came, one of their sons should marry one of
their daughters. Mrs Ashburnham had been a Powys and remained
Mrs Powys' dearest friend. They had drifted about the world as
English soldiers do, seldom meeting, but their women always in
correspondence one with another. They wrote about minute things
such as the teething of Edward and of the earlier daughters or the
best way to repair a Jacob's ladder in a stocking. And, if they met
seldom, yet it was often enough to keep each other's personalities
fresh in their minds, gradually growing a little stiff in the joints,
but always with enough to talk about and with a store of
reminiscences.
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