"I--I believe if I had nothing else to do I could leave the flat to-morrow," Mrs. Hunt said, submitting. "Would you all be happy, Geoff?--and very good?"

"Yes, if you'd hurry up and come. You'll be a good kid, Alison, won't you?"

"'Ess," said Alison. "Will I see tsickens?"

"Ever so many," Norah said. "And Michael will be a darling: and we'll all sleep together in one big room, and have pillow-fights!"

"You had certainly better come soon, before your family's manners become ruined, Mrs. Hunt," said Mr. Linton, laughing. "Then you can really manage to get away to-morrow? Very well--I'll call for you about five, if that will do."

"Yes; that will give me time to see Douglas first."

"But you won't tell him anything?"

"Oh, no: he would only worry. Of course, Mr. Linton, I shall be able to get up to see him every day?"

"We're less than an hour by rail," he told her. "And the trains are good. Now I think you had better pack up those youngsters, and I'll get a taxi."

Norah helped to pack the little clothes, trying hard to remember instructions as to food and insistence on good manners.

"Oh, I know you'll spoil them," said Mrs. Hunt resignedly. "Poor mites, they could do with a bit of spoiling: they have had a dreary year. But I think they will be good: they have been away with my sister sometimes, and she gives them a good character."

The children said good-bye to their mother gaily enough: the ride in the motor was sufficient excitement to smooth out any momentary dismay at parting. Only Geoffrey sat up very straight, with his lips tightly pressed together. He leaned from the window--Norah gripping his coat anxiously.

"You'll be true-certain to come to-morrow, Mother?"

"I promise," she said. "Good-bye, old son."

"Mother always keeps her promises, so it's all right," he said, leaning back with a little smile. Alison had no worries. She sang "Hi, diddle, diddle!" loud and clear, as they rushed through the crowded streets. When a block in the traffic came, people on 'buses looked down, smiling involuntarily at the piping voice coming from the recesses of the taxi. As for Michael, he sat on Norah's knee and sucked his thumb in complete content.

Jones met them at the end of the little journey. His lips involuntarily shaped themselves to a whistle of amazement as the party filed out of the station, though to the credit of his training be it recorded that no sound came. Geoffrey caught his breath with delight at the sight of the brown cobs.

"Oh-h! Are they yours?"

"Yes--aren't they dears?" responded Norah.

The boy caught her hand.

"Oh--could I _possibly_ sit in front and look at them?"

Norah laughed.

"Could he, Jones? Would you take care of him?"

"'E'd be as safe as in a cradle, Miss Norah," said Jones delightedly.

"Come on up, sir, and I'll show you 'ow to drive." Mr. Linton swung him up, smiling at the transfigured little face. Norah had already got her charges into the carriage: a porter stowed away their trunk, and the horses trotted off through the dusk.

"I didn't ever want to get out," Geoffrey confided to Norah, as they went up the steps to the open door of Homewood. "That kind man let me hold the end of the reins. And he says he'll show me more horses to-morrow."

"There's a pony too--we'll teach you to ride it," said Mr. Linton.

Whereat Geoffrey gasped with joy and became speechless.

"Well--have you got them all tucked up?" asked Mr. Linton, when Norah joined him in the morning-room an hour later.

"Oh, yes; they were so tired, poor mites. Bride helped me to bathe them, and we fed them all on bread and milk--with lots of cream.

Michael demanded "Mummy," but he was too sleepy to worry much. But; Dad--Geoff wants you badly to say 'good-night.' He says his own Daddy always says it to him when he's in bed. Would you mind?"

"Right," said her father. He went upstairs, with Norah at his heels, and tiptoed into the big room where two of his three small guests were already sleeping soundly. He looked very tall as he stood beside the little bed in the corner. Geoff's bright eyes peeped up at him.

"It was awful good of you to come," he said sleepily. "Daddy does.

He says, 'Good night, old chap, and G.o.d bless you.'"

"Good night, old chap, and G.o.d bless you," said David Linton gravely.

He held the small hand a moment in his own, and then, stooping, brushed his forehead with his lips.

"G.o.d bless you," said Geoff's drowsy voice. "I'm going--going to ride the pony . . . to-morrow." His words trailed off in sleep.

CHAPTER VII

THE THATCHED COTTAGE

But for the narrow white beds, you would hardly have thought that the big room was a hospital ward. In days before all the world was caught into a whirlpool of war it had been a ballroom. A famous painter had made the vaulted ceiling an exquisite thing of palest blush-roses and laughing Cupids, tumbling among vine-leaves and tendrils. The white walls bore long panels of the same design. There were no fittings for light visible: when darkness fell, the touch of a b.u.t.ton flooded the room with a soft glow, coming from some unseen source in the carved cornice. The shining floor bore heavy Persian rugs, and there were tables heaped with books and magazines; and the nurses who flitted in and out were all dainty and good to look at. All about the room were splendid palms in pots; from giants twenty feet high, to lesser ones the graceful leaves of which could just catch the eye of a tired man in bed--fresh from the grim ugliness of the trenches. It was the palms you saw as you came in--not the beds here and there among them.

A good many of the patients were up this afternoon, for this was a ward for semi-convalescents. Not all were fully dressed: they moved about in dressing-gowns, or lay on the sofas, or played games at the little tables. One man was in uniform: Major Hunt, who sat in a big chair near his bed, and from time to time cast impatient glances at the door.

"Wish we weren't going to lose you, Major," said a tall man in a purple dressing-gown, who came up the ward with wonderful swiftness, considering that he was on crutches. "But I expect you're keen to go."

"Oh, yes; though I'll miss this place." Major Hunt cast an appreciative glance down the beautiful room. "It has been great luck to be here; there are not many hospitals like this in England.

But--well, even if home is only a beastly little flat in Bloomsbury it _is_ home, and I shall be glad to get back to my wife and the youngsters. I miss the kids horribly."

"Yes, one does," said the other.

"I daresay I'll find them something of a crowd on wet days, when they can't get out," said Major Hunt, laughing. "The flat is small, and my wretched nerves are all on edge. But I want them badly, for all that.

And it's rough on my wife to be so much alone. She has led a kind of wandering life since war broke out--sometimes we've been able to have the kids with us, but not always." He stretched himself wearily.

"Gad! how glad I'll be when the Boche is hammered and we're able to have a decent home again!"

"We're all like that," said the other man. "I've seen my youngsters twice in the last year."

"Yes, you're worse off than I am," said Major Hunt. He looked impatiently towards the door, fidgeting. "I wish Stella would come."

But when a nurse brought him a summons presently, and he said good-bye to the ward and went eagerly down to the ground-floor (in an electric lift worked by an earl's daughter in a very neat uniform), it was not his wife who awaited him in a little white-and-gold sitting-room, but a very tall man, looking slightly apologetic.

"Your wife is perfectly well," said David Linton, checking the quick inquiry that rose to the soldier's lips. "But I persuaded her to give me the job of calling for you to-day: our car is rather more comfortable than a taxi, and the doctor thought it would be a good thing for you to have a little run first."

Major Hunt tried not to look disappointed, and failed signally.