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Ebook has 995 lines and 40429 words, and 20 pages

"Rules be hanged!" said Jim cheerfully. "Just you sit there, Miss de Lisle." And the cook-lady found herself beside Colonel West, who paid her great attention, regarding her, against the evidence of his eyes, as a Tired Person whom he had not previously chanced to meet.

"My poor, neglected babies!" said Mrs. Hunt tragically, as twelve strokes chimed from the grandfather clock in the hall. Wally and Norah, crowned with blue and scarlet paper caps, the treasure of crackers, were performing a weird dance which they called, with no very good reason, a tango. It might have been anything, but it satisfied the performers. The music stopped suddenly, and Mr. Linton wound up the gramophone for the last time, slipping on a new record. The notes of "Auld Lang Syne," stole out.

They gathered round, holding hands while they sang it; singing with all their lungs and all their hearts: Norah between Jim and Wally, feeling her fingers crushed in each boyish grip.

"Then here's a hand, my trusty friend, And gie's a hand o' thine."

Over the music her heart listened to the booming of the guns across the Channel. But she set her lips and sang on.

It was morning, and they were on the station. The train came slowly round the corner.

"I'll look after him, Nor." Wally's voice shook. "Don't worry too much, old girl."

"And yourself, too," she said.

"And we'll plan all sorts of things for your next leave," said David Linton. "God bless you, boys."

They gripped hands. Then Jim put his arms round Norah's shoulder.

"You'll keep smiling, kiddie? Whatever comes?"

"Yes, I promise, Jimmy."

The guard was shouting.

"All aboard."

"Cheero, Norah!" Wally cried from the window. "We'll be back in no time!"

"Cheero!" She made the word come somehow. The train roared off round the curve.

The months went by quickly enough, as David Linton and his daughter settled down to their work at the Home for Tired People. As the place became more widely known they had rarely an empty room. The boys' regiment sent them many a wearied officer, too fagged in mind and body to enjoy his leave: the hospitals kept up a constant supply of convalescent and maimed patients; and there was a steady stream of Australians of all ranks, who came, homesick for their own land, and found a little corner of it planted in the heart of Surrey. Gradually, as the Lintons realized the full extent of the homesickness of the lads from overseas, Homewood became more and more Australian in details. Pictures from every State appeared on the walls: aboriginal weapons and curiosities, woven grass mats from the natives of Queensland, Australian books and magazines and papers--all were scattered about the house. They filled vases with blue-gum leaves and golden wattle-blossom from the South of France: Norah even discovered a flowering boronia in a Kew nurseryman's greenhouse and carried it off in triumph, to scent the house with the unforgettable delight of its perfume. She never afterwards saw a boronia without recalling the bewilderment of her fellow-travellers in the railway carriage at her exquisitely-scented burden.

"You should have seen their wondering noses, Dad!" said Norah, chuckling.

No one, of course, stayed very long at Homewood, unless he were hopelessly unfit. From ten days to three weeks was the average stay: then, like ships that pass in the night, the "Once-Tireds," drifted away. But very few forgot them. Little notes came from the Fronts, in green Active Service envelopes: postcards from Mediterranean ports; letters from East and West Africa; grateful letters from wives in garrison stations and training camps throughout the British Isles. They accumulated an extraordinary collection of photographs in uniform; and Norah had an autograph book with scrawled signatures, peculiar drawings and an occasional scrap of very bad verse.

Major Hunt, his hand fully recovered, returned to the Front in February, and his wife prepared to seek another home. But the Lintons flatly refused to let her go.

"We couldn't do it," said David Linton. "Doesn't the place agree with the babies?"

"Oh, you know it does," said Mrs. Hunt. "But we have already kept the cottage far too long--there are other people."

"Not for that cottage," Norah said.

"It really isn't fair," protested their guest. "Douglas never dreamed of our staying: if he had not been sent out in such a hurry at the last he would have moved us himself."

David Linton looked at her for a moment.

"Go and play with the babies, Norah," he said. "I want to talk to this obstinate person."

"But you have done that for us. Look at Douglas--strong and fit, with one hand as good as the other. Think of what he was when he came here!"

"He may not always be fit. And if you stay here you ease his worries by benefiting his children--and saving for their future. Then, if he has the bad luck to be wounded again, his house is all ready for him."

"I know," she said. "And I would stay, but that there are others who need it more."

"Well, we haven't heard of them. Look at it another way. I am getting an old man; it worries me a good deal to think that Norah has no woman to mother her. I used to think," he said with a sigh, "that it was worse for them to lose their own mother when they were wee things; now, I am not sure that Norah's loss is not just beginning. It's no small thing for her to have an influence like yours; and Norah loves you."

Mrs. Hunt flushed.

"Indeed, I love her," she said.

"Then stay and mother her. There are ever so many things you can teach her that I can't: that Miss de Lisle can't, good soul as she is. They're not things I can put into words--but you'll understand. I know she's clean and wholesome right through, but you can help to mould her for womanhood. Of course, she left school far too early, but there seemed no help for it. And if--if bad news comes to us from the Front--for any of us--we can all help each other."

Mrs. Hunt thought deeply.

"If you really think I can be of use I will stay," she said. "I'm not going to speak of gratitude--I tried to say all that long ago. But indeed I will do what I can."

"That's all right: I'm very glad," said David Linton.

"And if you really want her taught more," Mrs. Hunt said--"well, I was a governess with fairly high certificates before I was married. She could come to me for literature and French; I was brought up in Paris. Her music, too: she really should practise, with her talent."

"I'd like it above all things," exclaimed Mr. Linton. "Norah's neglected education has been worrying me badly."

"We'll plan it out," Mrs. Hunt said. "Now I feel much happier."

Norah did not need much persuasion; after the first moment of dismay at the idea of renewed lessons she saw the advantages of the plan--helped by the fact that she was always a little afraid of failing to come up to Jim's standard. A fear which would considerably have amazed Jim, had he but guessed it! It was easy enough to fit hours of study into her day. She rose early to practise, before the Tired People were awake; and most mornings saw her reading with Mrs. Hunt or chattering French, while Eva sang shrilly in the kitchen, and the babies slept in their white bunks; and Geoffrey followed Mr. Linton's heels, either on Brecon or afoot. The big Australian squatter and the little English boy had become great friends: there was something in the tiny lad that recalled the Jim of long ago, with his well-knit figure and steady eyes.

One man alone, out of all Tired People, had never left Homewood.

For a time after his arrival Philip Hardress had gained steadily in strength and energy; then a chill had thrown him back, and for months he sagged downwards; never very ill, but always losing vitality. The old depression seemed to come back to him tenfold. He could see nothing good in life: a cripple, a useless cripple. His parents were dead; save for a brother in Salonica, he was alone in the world. He was always courteous, always gentle; but a wall of misery seemed to cut him off from the household.

Then the magnificent physique of the boy asserted itself, and gradually he grew stronger, and the hacking cough left him. Again it became possible to tempt him to try to ride. He spent hours in the keen wintry air, jogging round the fields and lanes with Mr. Linton and Geoffrey, returning with something of the light in his eyes that had encouraged Norah in his first morning, long ago.

"I believe all he wants is to get interested in something," Norah said, watching him, one day, as he sat on the stone wall of the terrace, looking across the park. "He was at Oxford before he joined the Army, wasn't he, Dad?"

Mr. Linton assented. "His people arranged when he was little that he should be a barrister. But he hated the idea. His own wish was to go out to Canada."

Norah pondered.

"Couldn't you give him a job on the farm, Dad?"

"I don't know," said her father. "I never thought of it. I suppose I might find him something to do; Hawkins and I will be busy enough presently."

"He's beginning to worry at being here so long," Norah said. "Of course, we couldn't possibly let him go: he isn't fit for his own society. I think if you could find him some work he would be more content."

So David Linton, after thinking the matter over, took Hardress into his plans for the farm which was to be the main source of supply for Homewood. He found him a quick and intelligent helper. The work was after the boy's own heart: he surrounded himself with agricultural books and treaties on fertilizers, made a study of soils, and took samples of earth from different parts of the farm--to the profound disgust of Hawkins. War had not done away with all expert agricultural science in England: Hardress sent his little packets of soil away, and received them back with advice as to treatment which, later on, resulted in the yield of the land being doubled--which Hawkins attributed solely to his own skill as a cultivator. But the cure was worked in Philip Hardress. The ring of hope came back into his voice: the "shop-leg" dragged ever so little, as he walked across the park daily to where the ploughs were turning the grass of the farm fields into stretches of brown, dotted with white gulls that followed the horses' slow plodding up and down. The other guests took up a good deal of Mr. Linton's time: he was not sorry to have an overseer, since Hawkins, while honest and painstaking, was not afflicted with any undue allowance of brains. Together, in the study at night, they planned out the farm into little crops. Already much of the land was ready for the planting, and a model poultry-run built near the house was stocked with birds; while a flock of sheep grazed in the park, and to the tiny herd of cows had been added half a dozen pure-bred Jerseys. David Linton had taken Hardress with him on the trip to buy the stock, and both had enjoyed it thoroughly.

Meanwhile the boys at the Front sent long and cheery letters almost daily. Astonishment had come to them almost as soon as they rejoined, in finding themselves promoted; they gazed at their second stars in bewilderment which was scarcely lessened by the fact that their friends in the regiment were not at all surprised.

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