OF LONDON AND OTHER MATTERS
Jim and Wally dropped lightly from the footboard of a swift motor-’bus,
dodged through the traffic, and swung quickly down a quiet side-street.
They stopped before a stone house, where, from a window above, Norah
watched their eager faces as Jim fitted his latchkey and opened the
door. She turned back into the room with a little sigh.
“There they are, Dad. And they’re passed fit—I know.”
David Linton looked up from the elbow-splint he was making.
“Well, it had to come, mate,” he said.
“Yes, I know. But I hoped it wouldn’t!” said poor Norah inconsistently.
“You wouldn’t like them not to go,” said her father. And then cheery
footsteps clattered up the stairs, and the boys burst in.
“Passed!” shouted Jim. “Fit as fiddles!”
“When?” Norah asked.
“This day week. So we’ll have nice time to settle you into Homewood and
try those horses, won’t we?”
“Yes, rather!” said Norah. “Were they quite satisfied with your arm,
Wally?”
“Yes, they say it’s a lovely arm,” said that gentleman modestly. “I
always knew it, but it’s nice to have other people agreeing with me!
And they say our lungs are beautiful too; not a trace of gas left.
And—oh, you tell them, Jim!”
“And we’re not to go out yet,” said Jim, grinning widely. “Special
Lewis-gun course at Aldershot first, and after that a bombing course.
So there you are.” He broke off, his utterance hindered by the fact
that Norah had suddenly hugged him very hard, while David Linton,
jumping up, caught Wally’s hand.
“Not the Front, my dear boys!”
“Well, not yet,” said Wally, pumping the hand, and finding Norah’s
searching for his free one. “It’s pretty decent, isn’t it? because
every one knows there will be plenty of war at the Front yet.”
“Plenty indeed,” said Mr. Linton.
“I say, buck up, old chap,” said Jim, patting Norah’s shoulder very
hard. “One would think we were booked for the trenches to-night!”
“I wouldn’t have made an ass of myself if you had been,” said Norah,
shaking back her curls and mopping her eyes defiantly. “I was prepared
for that, and then you struck me all of a heap! Oh, Jimmy, I am glad!
I’d like to hug the War Office!”
“You’re the first person I ever heard with such sentiments,” returned
her brother. “Most people want to heave bombs at it. However, they’ve
treated us decently, and no mistake. You see, ever since June we’ve
kept bothering them to go out, and then getting throat-trouble and
having to cave in again; and now that we really are all right I suppose
they think they’ll make sure of us. So that’s that.”
“I would have been awfully wild if they hadn’t passed us,” Wally said.
“But since they have, and they’ll put us to work, I don’t weep a bit at
being kept back for awhile. Lots of chaps seem to think being at the
Front is heavenly, but I’m blessed if I can see it that way. We didn’t
have very much time there, certainly, but there were only three
ingredients in what we did have—mud, barbed wire, and gas.”
“Yes, and it’s not much of a mixture,” said Jim. “All the same, it’s
got to be taken if necessary. Still, I’m not sorry it’s postponed for a
bit; there will be heaps of war yet, and meanwhile we’re just learning
the trade.” He straightened his great shoulders. “I never felt so
horribly young and ignorant as when I found grown-up men in my charge
in France.”
“Poor old Jimmy always did take his responsibilities heavily,” said
Wally, laughing.
Mr. Linton looked at his big son, remembering a certain letter from his
commanding officer which had caused him and Norah to glow with pride;
remembering, also, how the men on Billabong Station had worked under
“Master Jim.” But he knew that soldiering had always been a serious
business to his boy. Personal danger had never entered into Jim’s mind;
but the danger of ignorant handling of his men had been a tremendous
thing to him. Even without “mud, barbed-wire, and gas” Jim was never
likely to enjoy war in the light-hearted way in which Wally would
certainly take it under more pleasant conditions.
“Well—we’ve a week then, boys,” he said cheerfully, “and no anxieties
immediately before us except the new cook-ladies.”
“Well, goodness knows they are enough,” Norah said fervently.
“Anything more settled?” Jim asked.
“I have an ecstatic letter from Allenby.” Allenby was the ex-sergeant.
“He seems in a condition of trembling joy at the prospect of being our
butler; and, what is more to the point, he says he has a niece whom he
can recommend as a housemaid. So I have told him to instal her before
we get to Homewood on Thursday. Hawkins has written a three-volume list
of things he will require for the farm, but I haven’t had time to study
it yet. And Norah has had letters from nineteen registry-offices, all
asking for a deposit!”
The boys roared.
“That makes seventy-one, doesn’t it, Nor?” Wally asked.
“Something like it,” Norah admitted ruefully. “And the beauty of it is,
not one of them will guarantee so much as a kitchenmaid. They say sadly
that ‘in the present crisis’ it’s difficult to supply servants. They
don’t seem to think there’s any difficulty about paying them
deposit-fees.”
“That phrase, ‘in the present crisis,’ is the backbone of business
to-day,” Mr. Linton said. “If a shop can’t sell you anything, or if
they mislay your property, or sell your purchase to some one else, or
keep your repairs six months and then lose them, or send in your
account with a lot of items you never ordered or received, they simply
wave ‘the present crisis’ at you, and all is well.”
“Yes, but they don’t regard it as any excuse if you pay too little, or
don’t pay at all,” Jim said.
“Of course not—that wouldn’t be business, my son,” said Wally,
laughing. “The one department the Crisis doesn’t hit is the one that
sends out bills.” He turned to Norah. “What about the cook-lady, Nor?”
“She’s safe,” said Norah, sighing with relief. “There’s an awfully
elegant letter from her, saying she’ll come.”
“Oh, that’s good business!” Jim said. For a fortnight Norah had had the
unforgettable experience of sitting in registry-offices, attempting to
engage a staff for Homewood. She had always been escorted by one or
more of her male belongings, and their extreme ignorance of how to
conduct the business had been plain to the meanest intelligence. The
ex-sergeant, whose spirit of meekness in proposing himself had been in
extraordinary contrast to the condescending truculence of other
candidates, had been thankfully retained. There had at times seemed a
danger that instead of butler he might awake to find himself
maid-of-all-work, since not one of the applicants came up to even
Norah’s limited standard. Finally, however, Mr. Linton had refused to
enter any more registry-offices or to let Norah enter them, describing
them, in good set terms as abominable holes; and judicious advertising
had secured them a housekeeper who seemed promising, and a cook who
insisted far more on the fact that she was a lady than on any ability
to prepare meals. The family, while not enthusiastic, was hopeful.
“I hope she’s all right,” Norah said doubtfully. “I suppose we can’t
expect much—they all tell you that nearly every servant in England has
‘gone into munitions,’ which always sounds as though she’d get fired
out of a trench-mortar presently.”
“Some of those we saw might be benefited by the process,” said Mr.
Linton, shuddering at memories of registry-offices.
“Well, what about the rest?—haven’t you got to get a kitchenmaid and
some more housemaids or things?” queried Jim vaguely.
“I’m not going to try here,” said Mr. Linton firmly. “Life is too
short; I’d sooner be my own kitchenmaid than let Norah into one of
those offices again. Allenby’s niece will have to double a few parts at
first, and I’ve written to Ireland—to Mrs. Moroney—to see if she can
find us two or three nice country girls. I believe she’ll be able to do
it. Meanwhile we’ll throw care to the winds. I’ve told Allenby to order
in all necessary stores, so that we can be sure of getting something to
eat when we go down; beyond that, I decline to worry, or let Norah
worry, about anything.”
“Then let’s go out and play,” cried Norah, jumping up.
“Right!” said the boys. “Where?”
“Oh, anywhere—we’ll settle as we go!” said Norah airily. She fled for
her hat and coat.
So they went to the Tower of London—a place little known to the
English, but of which Australians never tire—and spent a blissful
afternoon in the Armoury, examining every variety of weapons and
armament, from Crusaders’ chain-mail to twentieth-century rifles. There
is no place so full of old stories and of history—history that suddenly
becomes quite a different matter from something you learn by the
half-page out of an extremely dull book at school. This is history
alive, and the dim old Tower becomes peopled with gay and gallant
figures clad in shining armour, bent on knightly adventures. There you
see mail shirts of woven links that slip like silken mesh through the
fingers, yet could withstand the deadliest thrust of a dagger; maces
with spiked heads, that only a mighty man could swing; swords such as
that with which Coeur-de-Lion could slice through such a mace as though
it were no more than a carrot—sinuous blades that Saladin loved, that
would sever a down cushion flung in the air. Daggers and poignards,
too, of every age, needle-pointed yet viciously strong, with
exquisitely inlaid hilts and fine-lined blades; long rapiers that
brought visions of gallants with curls and lace stocks and silken hose,
as ready to fight as to dance or to make a poem to a fair lady’s
eyebrow. Helmets of every age, with visors behind which the knights of
old had looked grimly as they charged down the lists at “gentle and
joyous passages of arms.” Horse-armour of amazing weight—“I always
pictured those old knights prancing out on a thirteen-stone hack, but
you’d want a Suffolk Punch to carry that ironmongery!” said Wally. So
through room after room, each full of brave ghosts of the past, looking
benevolently at the tall boy-soldiers from the New World; until at
length came closing-time, and they went out reluctantly, across the
flagged yard where poor young Anne Boleyn laid her gentle head on the
block; where the ravens hop and caw to-day as their ancestors did in
the sixteenth century when she walked across from her grim prison that
still bears on its wall a scrawled “Anne.” A dull little prison-room,
it must have been, after the glitter and pomp of castles and
palaces—with only the rugged walls of the Tower Yard to look upon from
the tiny window.
“And she must have had such a jolly good time at first,” said Wally.
“Old Henry VIII was very keen on her, wasn’t he? And then she was only
his second wife—by the time he’d had six they must have begun to feel
themselves rather two-a-penny!”
They found a ’bus that took them by devious ways through the City; the
part of London that many Londoners never see, since it is another world
from the world of Bond Street and Oxford Street, with their newness and
their glittering shops. But to the queer folk who come from overseas,
it is the real London, and they wander in its narrow streets and link
fingers with the past. Old names look down from the smoke-grimed walls:
Black Friars and White Friars, Bread Street, St. Martin’s Lane,
Leadenhall Street, Temple Bar: the hurrying crowd of to-day fades, and
instead come ghosts of armed men and of leather-jerkined ’prentices,
less ready to work than to fight; of gallants with ruffs, and fierce
sailor-men of the days of Queen Bess, home from the Spanish Main with
ships laden with gold, swaggering up from the Docks to spend their
prize-money as quickly as they earned it. Visions of dark nights, with
link-boys running beside chair-bearers, carrying exquisite ladies to
routs and masques: of foot-pads, slinking into dark alleys and doorways
as the watch comes tramping down the street. Visions of the press-gang,
hunting stout lads, into every tavern, whisking them from their
hiding-places and off to the ships: to disappear with never a word of
farewell until, years later, bronzed and tarred and strange of speech,
they returned to astounded families who had long mourned them as dead.
Visions of Queen Bess, with her haughty face and her red hair, riding
through the City that adored her, her white palfrey stepping daintily
through the cheering crowd: and great gentlemen beside her—Raleigh,
Essex, Howard. They all wander together through the grey streets where
the centuries-old buildings tower overhead: all blending together, a
formless jumble of the Past, and yet very much alive: and it does not
seem to matter in the least that you look down upon them from a
rattling motor-’bus that leaves pools of oil where perchance lay the
puddle over which Raleigh flung his cloak lest his queen’s slipper
should be soiled. Very soon we shall look down on the City from
airships while conductors come and stamp our tickets with a bell-punch:
but the old City will be unchanged, and it will be only we who look
upon it who will pass like shadows from its face.
The Australians left their ’bus in Fleet Street, and dived down a
narrow lane to a low doorway with the sign of the _Cheshire Cheese_—the
old inn with sanded floor and bare oak benches and tables, where Dr.
Johnson and his followers used to meet, to dine and afterwards to smoke
long churchwarden pipes and talk, as Wally said, “such amazing fine
language that it made you feel a little light-headed.” It is to be
feared that the Australians had not any great enthusiasm for Dr.
Johnson. They had paid a visit of inspection to the room upstairs where
the great man used to take his ease, but not one of them had felt any
desire to sit in his big armchair.
“You don’t understand what a chance you’re scorning,” Mr. Linton had
said, laughing, as his family turned from the seat of honour. “Why,
good Americans die happy if they can only say they have sat in Dr.
Johnson’s chair!”
“_I_ think he was an ill-mannered old man!” quoth Norah, with her nose
tilted. Which seemed to end the matter, so far as they were concerned.
But if the Billabong family took no interest in Dr. Johnson, they had a
deep affection for the old inn itself. They loved its dim rooms with
their blackened oak, and it was a never-ending delight to watch the
medley of people who came there for meals: actors, artists, literary
folk, famous and otherwise; Americans, foreigners, Colonials;
politicians, fighting men of both Services, busy City men: for
everybody comes, sooner or later, to the old _Cheshire Cheese_. Being
people of plain tastes they liked the solid, honest meals—especially
since increasing War-prices were already inducing hotels and
restaurants everywhere to disguise a tablespoonful of hashed oddments
under an elegant French name and sell it for as much money as a dinner
for a hungry man. Norah used to fight shy of the famous “lark-pudding”
until it was whispered to her that what was not good beef steaks in the
dish was nothing more than pigeon or possibly even sparrow! after which
she enjoyed it, and afterwards pilgrimaged to the kitchen to see the
great blue bowls, as big as a wash-hand basin, in which the puddings
have been made since Dr. Johnson’s time, and the great copper in which
they are boiled all night. Legend says that any one who can eat three
helpings of lark-pudding is presented with all that remains: but no one
has ever heard of a hero able to manage his third plateful!
Best of all the Billabong folk loved the great cellars under the inn,
which were once the cloisters of an old monastery: where there are
unexpected steps, and dim archways, and winding paths where it is very
easy to imagine that you see bare-footed friars with brown habits and
rope girdles pacing slowly along. There they bought quaint brown jars
and mustard-pots of the kind that are used, and have always been used,
on the tables above. But best of all were the great oaken beams above
them, solid as England itself, but blackened and charred by the Great
Fire of 1666. Norah used to touch the burned surface gently, wondering
if it was not a dream—if the hand on the broken charcoal were really
her own, more used to Bosun’s bridle on the wide plains of Billabong!
There were not many people in the room as they came in this evening,
for it was early; dinner, indeed, was scarcely ready, and a few
customers sat about, reading evening papers and discussing the war
news. In one corner were an officer and a lady; and at sight of the
former Jim and Wally saluted and broke into joyful smiles. The officer
jumped up and greeted them warmly.
“Hullo, boys!” he said. “I’m delighted to see you. Fit again?—you look
it!”
“Dad, this is Major Hunt,” Jim said, dragging his father forward. “You
remember, of our regiment. And my sister, sir. I say, I’m awfully glad
to see you!”
“Come and meet my wife,” said Major Hunt. “Stella, here are the two
young Australians that used to make my life a burden!”
Everybody shook hands indiscriminately, and presently they joined
forces round a big table, while Jim and Wally poured out questions
concerning the regiment and every one in it.
“Most of them are going strong,” Major Hunt said—“we have a good few
casualties, of course, but we haven’t lost many officers—most of them
have come back. I think all your immediate chums are still in France.
But I’ve been out of it myself for two months—stopped a bit shrapnel
with my hand, and it won’t get better.” He indicated a bandaged left
hand as he spoke, and they realized that his face was worn, and deeply
lined with pain. “It’s stupid,” he said, and laughed. “But when are you
coming back? We’ve plenty of work for you.”
They told him, eagerly.
“Well, you might just as well learn all you can before you go out,”
Major Hunt said. “The war’s not going to finish this winter, or the
next. Indeed, I wouldn’t swear that my six-year-old son, who is
drilling hard, won’t have time to be in at the finish!” At which Mrs.
Hunt shuddered and said, “Don’t be so horrible, Douglas!” She was a
slight, pretty woman, cheery and pleasant, and she made them all laugh
by her stories of work in a canteen.
“All the soldiers used to look upon us as just part of the furniture,”
she said. “They used to rush in, in a break between parades, and give
their orders in a terrible hurry. As for saying “Please—well——”
“You ought to have straightened them up,” said Major Hunt, with a
good-tempered growl.
“Ah, poor boys, they hadn’t time! The Irish regiments were better, but
then it isn’t any trouble for an Irishman to be polite; it comes to him
naturally. But those stolid English country lads can’t say things
easily.” She laughed. “I remember a young lance-corporal who used often
to come to our house to see my maid. He was terribly shy, and if I
chanced to go into the kitchen he always bolted like a rabbit into the
scullery. The really terrible thing was that sometimes I had to go on
to the scullery myself, and run him to earth among the saucepans, when
he would positively shake with terror. I used to wonder how he ever
summoned up courage to speak to Susan, let alone to face the foe when
he went to France!”
“That’s the sort that gets the V.C. without thinking about it,” said
Major Hunt, laughing.
“I was very busy in the Canteen one morning—it was a cold, wet day, and
the men rushed us for hot drinks whenever they had a moment. Presently
a warrior dashed up to the counter, banged down his penny and said
‘Coffee!’ in a voice of thunder. I looked up and caught his eye as I
was turning to run for the coffee—and it was my lance-corporal!”
“What did you do?”
“We just gibbered at each other across the counter for a moment, I
believe—and I never saw a face so horror-stricken! Then he turned and
fled, leaving his penny behind him. Poor boy—I gave it to Susan to
return to him.”
“Didn’t you ever make friends with any of them, Mrs. Hunt?” Norah
asked.
“Oh yes! when we had time, or when they had. But often one was on the
rush for every minute of our four-hour shifts.”
“Jolly good of you,” said Jim.
“Good gracious, no! It was a very poor sort of war-work, but busy
mothers with only one maid couldn’t manage more. And I loved it,
especially in Cork: the Irish boys were dears, and so keen. I had a
great respect for those boys. The lads who enlisted in England had all
their chums doing the same thing, and everybody patted them on the back
and said how noble they were, and gave them parties and speeches and
presents. But the Irish boys enlisted, very often, dead against the
wishes of their own people, and against their priest—and you’ve got to
live in Ireland to know what _that_ means.”
“The wonder to me was, always, the number of Irishmen who did enlist,”
said Major Hunt. “And aren’t they fighters!”
“They must be great,” Jim said. “You should hear our fellows talk about
the Dublins and the Munsters in Gallipoli.” His face clouded: it was a
grievous matter to Jim that he had not been with those other Australian
boys who had already made the name of Anzac ring through the world.
“Yes, you must be very proud of your country,” Mrs. Hunt said, with her
charming smile. “I tell my husband that we must emigrate there after
the war. It must be a great place in which to bring up children,
judging by all the Australians one sees.”
“Possibly—but a man with a damaged hand isn’t wanted there,” Major Hunt
said curtly.
“Oh, you’ll be all right long before we want to go out,” was his wife’s
cheerful response. But there was a shadow in her eyes.
Wally did not notice any shadow. He had hero-worshipped Major Hunt in
his first days of soldiering, when that much-enduring officer, a Mons
veteran with the D.S.O. to his credit, had been chiefly responsible for
the training of newly-joined subalterns: and Major Hunt, in his turn,
had liked the two Australian boys, who, whatever their faults of
carelessness or ignorance, were never anything but keen. Now, in his
delight at meeting his senior officer again, Wally chattered away like
a magpie, asking questions, telling Irish fishing-stories, and other
stories of adventures in Ireland, hazarding wild opinions about the
war, and generally manifesting a cheerful disregard of the fact that
the tired man opposite him was not a subaltern as irresponsible as
himself. Somehow, the weariness died out of Major Hunt’s eyes. He began
to joke in his turn, and to tell queer yarns of the trenches: and
presently, indeed, the whole party seemed to be infected by the same
spirit, so that the old walls of the _Cheshire Cheese_ echoed laughter
that must have been exceedingly discouraging to the ghost of Dr.
Johnson, if, as is said, that unamiable maker of dictionaries haunts
his ancient tavern.
“Well, you’ve made us awfully cheerful,” said Major Hunt, when dinner
was over, and they were dawdling over coffee. “Stella and I were
feeling rather down on our luck, I believe, when you appeared, and now
we’ve forgotten all about it. Do you always behave like this, Miss
Linton?”
“No, I have to be very sedate, or I’d never keep my big family in
order,” said Norah, laughing. “You’ve no idea what a responsibility
they are.”
“Haven’t I?” said he. “You forget I have a houseful of my own.”
“Tell me about them,” Norah asked. “Do you keep them in order?”
“We say we do, for the sake of discipline, but I’m not too sure about
it,” said Mrs. Hunt. “As a matter of fact, I am very strict, but
Douglas undoes all my good work. Is it really true that he is strict in
the regiment, Mr. Jim?”
Jim and Wally shuddered.
“I’d find it easier to tell you if he wasn’t here,” Jim said. “There
are awful memories, aren’t there, Wal?”
“Rather!” said Wally feelingly. “Do you remember the day I didn’t
salute on parade?”
“I believe your mangled remains were carried off the barrack-square,”
said Jim, with a twinkle. “I expect I should have been one of the
fatigue-part, only that was the day I was improperly dressed!”
“What, you didn’t come on parade in a bath-towel, did you?” his father
asked.
“No, but I had a shoulder-strap undone—it’s nearly as bad, isn’t it,
sir?” Jim grinned at Major Hunt.
“If I could remember the barrack-square frown, at the moment, I would
assume it,” said that officer, laughing. “Never mind, I’ll deal with
you both when we all get back.”
“You haven’t told me about the family,” Norah persisted. “The family
you are strict with, I mean,” she added kindly.
“You have no more respect for a field-officer than your brother has,”
said he.
“Whisper!” said Mrs. Hunt. “He was only a subaltern himself before the
war!”
Her husband eyed her severely.
“You’ll get put under arrest if you make statements liable to excite
indiscipline among the troops!” he said. “Don’t listen to her, Miss
Linton, and I’ll tell you about the family she spoils. There’s
Geoffrey, who is six, and Alison, who’s five—at least I think she’s
five, isn’t she, Stella?”
“Much you know of your babies!” said his wife, with a fine scorn.
“Alison won’t be five for two months.”
“Hasn’t she a passion for detail!” said her husband admiringly. “Well,
five-ish, Miss Linton. And finally there’s a two-year-old named
Michael. And when they all get going together they make rather more
noise than a regiment. But they’re rather jolly, and I hope you’ll come
and see them.”
“Oh, do,” said Mrs. Hunt. “Geoff would just love to hear about
Australia. He told me the other day that when he grows up he means to
go out there and be a kangaroo!”
“I suppose you know you must never check a child’s natural ambitions!”
Mr. Linton told her gravely.
“Was that your plan?” she laughed.
“Oh, my pair hadn’t any ambitions beyond sitting on horses perpetually
and pursuing cattle!” said Mr. Linton. “That was very useful to me, so
I certainly didn’t check it.”
“H’m!” said Jim, regarding him inquiringly. “I wonder how your theory
would have lasted, Dad, if I’d grown my hair long and taken to
painting?”
“That wouldn’t have been a natural ambition at all, so I should have
been able to deal with it with a clear conscience,” said his father,
laughing. “In any case, the matter could safely have been left to
Norah—she would have been more than equal to it.”
“I trust so,” said Norah pleasantly. “_You_ with long hair, Jimmy!”
“It’s amazing—and painful—to see the number of fellows who take long
hair into khaki with them,” said Major Hunt. “The old Army custom was
to get your hair cut over the comb for home service and under the comb
for active service. Jolly good rule, too. But the subaltern of the New
Army goes into the trenches with locks like a musician’s. At least, too
many of him does.”
“Never could understand any one caring for the bother of long hair,”
said Jim, running his hand over his dark, close-cropped poll. “I say,
isn’t it time we made a move, if we’re going to a show?” He looked
half-shyly at Mrs. Hunt. “Won’t you and the Major come with us? It’s
been so jolly meeting you.”
“Good idea!” said Mr. Linton, cutting across Mrs. Hunt’s protest. “Do
come—I know Norah is longing to be asked to meet the family, and that
will give you time to fix it up.” He over-ruled any further objections
by the simple process of ignoring them, whereupon the Hunts wisely gave
up manufacturing any more: and presently they had discovered two taxis,
Norah and her father taking Mrs. Hunt in the first, leaving the three
soldiers to follow in the second. They slid off through the traffic of
Fleet Street.
“We really shouldn’t let you take possession of us like this,” said
Mrs. Hunt a little helplessly. “But it has been so lovely to see
Douglas cheerful again. He has not laughed so much for months.”
“You are anxious about his hand?” David Linton asked.
“Yes, very. He has had several kinds of treatment for it, but it
doesn’t seem to get better; and the pain is wearing. The doctors say
his best chance is a thorough change, as well as treatment, but we
can’t manage it—the three babies are expensive atoms. Now there is a
probability of another operation to his hand, and he has been so
depressed about it, that I dragged him out to dinner in the hope of
cheering him up. But I don’t think I should have succeeded if we hadn’t
met you.”
“It was great luck for us,” Norah said. “The boys have always told us
so much of Major Hunt. He was ever so good to them.”
“He told me about them, too,” said Mrs. Hunt. “He liked them because he
said he never succeeded in boring them!”
“Why, you couldn’t bore Jim and Wally!” said Norah, laughing. Then a
great idea fell upon her, and she grew silent, leaving the conversation
to her companions as the taxi whirred on its swift way through the
crowded streets until they drew up before the theatre.
In the vestibule she found her father close to her and endeavoured to
convey many things to him by squeezing his arm very hard among the
crowd, succeeding in so much that Mr. Linton knew perfectly well that
Norah was the victim of a new idea—and was quite content to wait to be
told what it was. But there was no chance of that until the evening was
over, and they had bade farewell to the Hunts, arranging to have tea
with them next day: after which a taxi bore them to the Kensington
flat, and they gathered in the sitting-room while Norah brewed coffee
over a spirit-lamp.
“I’m jolly glad we met the Hunts,” Jim said. “But isn’t it cruel luck
for a man like that to be kept back by a damaged hand!”
“Rough on Mrs. Hunt, too,” Wally remarked. “She looked about as seedy
as he did.”
“Daddy——!” said Norah eagerly.
David Linton laughed.
“Yes, I knew you had one,” he said, “Out with it—I’ll listen.”
“They’re Tired People,” said Norah: and waited.
“Yes, they’re certainly tired enough,” said her father. “But the
children, Norah? I don’t think we could possibly take in little
children, considering the other weary inmates.”
“No, I thought that too,” Norah answered eagerly. “But don’t you
remember the cottage, Daddy? Why shouldn’t they have it?”
“By Jove!” said Jim. “That jolly little thatched place?”
“Yes—it has several rooms. They could let their own house, and then
they’d save heaps of money. It would get them right out of London; and
Mrs. Hunt told me that London is the very worst place for him—the
doctors said so.”
“That is certainly an idea,” Mr. Linton said. “It’s near enough to
London for Hunt to run up for his treatment. We could see that they
were comfortable.” He smiled at Norah, whose flushed face was dimly
visible through the steam of the coffee. “I think it would be rather a
good way to begin our job, Norah.”
“It would be so nice that it doesn’t feel like any sort of work!” said
Norah.
“I think you may find a chance of work; they have three small children,
and not much money,” said her father prophetically.
“I say, I hope the Major would agree,” Jim put in. “I know he’s
horribly proud.”
“We’ll kidnap the babies, and then they’ll just have to come,” Norah
laughed.
“Picture Mr. Linton,” said Wally happily, “carrying on the good work by
stalking through London with three kids sticking out of his
pockets—followed by Norah, armed with feeding-bottles!”
“Wounded officer and wife hard in pursuit armed with shot guns!”
supplemented Jim. “I like your pacifist ideas of running a home for
Tired People, I must say!”
“Why, they would forget that they had ever been tired!” said Norah. “I
think it’s rather a brilliant notion—there certainly wouldn’t be
another convalescent home in England run on the same lines. But you’re
not good on matters of detail—people don’t have feeding-bottles for
babies of that age.”
“I’m not well up in babies,” said Wally. “Nice people, but I like
somebody else to manage ’em. I thought bottles were pretty safe until
they were about seven!”
“Well, we’ll talk it over with the Hunts to-morrow—the cottage, not the
bottles,” Mr. Linton said. “Meanwhile, it’s bed-time, so good-night,
everybody.” He dispersed the assembly by the simple process of
switching off the electric light—smiling to himself as Jim and Norah
two-stepped, singing, down the tiny corridor in the darkness.
But the mid-day post brought a worried little note from Mrs. Hunt,
putting off the party. Her husband had had a bad report on his hand
that morning, and was going into hospital for an immediate operation.
She hoped to fix a day later on—the note was a little incoherent. Norah
had a sudden vision of the three small Hunts “who made rather more
noise than a regiment” rampaging round the harassed mother as she tried
to write.
“Perhaps it’s as well—we’ll study the cottage, and make sure that it’s
all right for them,” said her father. “Then we’ll kidnap them.
Meanwhile we’ll go and send them a big hamper of fruit, and put some
sweets in for the babies.” A plan which was so completely after Norah’s
heart that she quite forgot her disappointment.