"How've You Been?"

"Don't be long, love," Ada Robinson cautioned her young (29) husband Tom as he left her and their baby daughter in England, to wind up his business in Africa's Orange Free State. Tom promised, and sailed away. That was 42 years ago. Tom kept meaning to return. "But I had a good job," he explains, "and if you left a good job in those days, someone took your place." Ada kept meaning to join him in South Africa. But soon after Tom left, another baby arrived, and she decided to wait. Then a war came along; then a depression; then another war. Ada and Tom wrote each other every week, but, said Ada, "something always kept happening" to keep them apart.

At long last, Tom wangled leave to visit his wife. Last week, Ada was waiting with their 42-year-old daughter at Waterloo Station, as a heavily mustached man of 71 elbowed through the crowd leaving an incoming train. Ada prodded her daughter. "That's Dad," she said. Tom planted a quick kiss on his wife. "Hello, love," he said. "How've you been?"

Their marriage? "It's been one of the happiest any couple could have," said Tom and Ada.

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