"No," said Dick miserably. "I've sent it off."
"Who to? Nan?"
"No. Mother."
Raven could hardly believe him. He did not remember any illuminating confidences from Dick on the subject of mother, but he made no doubt the boy looked upon her as he did, as a force too eccentrically irresponsible to be unloosed.
"Well!" he said. The state of things struck him as too bad to be taken otherwise than calmly. You couldn't spend on it the amount of emotion it deserved, so you might as well get the credit with yourself and your antagonist of an attack unexpectedly gentle. "Now, what did you think you were doing when you sent it off to your mother?"
"Uncle Jack," said Dick, rather awkwardly blundering about his mental armory for some reasonable defense, "she's your sister."
"Yes," said Raven, "Milly is my sister. What then?"
"Then, why, then," said Dick, "when a thing like this happens to you, she'd feel it, wouldn't she?"
"You're perfectly sure you know what has happened to me? You trust your own diagnosis?"
"Of course I trust it," Dick burst forth. "Your letter—why, your letter isn't normal. Shell shock's a perfectly legitimate thing. You know it is. You're just the one to be hit. You did perfectly crazy things over there, entirely beyond any man of your years. And I'm mighty thankful we can put our finger on it. For if it isn't shell shock, it's something worse."