“I have a letter from Wallace,” said James, “that I've been waiting to read you. Shall I do so now?”
“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mary, “we shall love to hear it. Wait a moment, though, while I fetch Rosamond—the Sparrow can't attend to them both at once and help Lily.”
She returned in a moment with the sleepy baby.
“I'll have to put her to bed soon,” she said, settling into a low rocking chair, “but it isn't quite time yet. I suppose Jamie has heard his father's letter?”
“Oh, yes,” said James, “and has dozens of his own, too.”
“He's such a dear boy,” Mary continued, “he's playing like an angel with Ellie in there, while the Sparrow flits.”
James unfolded Mac's closely written sheets, and read his latest accounts of the officers' training corps with which he had been for the last six months, the gossip that filtered to them from the front, and his expectation of being soon gazetted to a Highland Regiment.
“The waiting is hard, but when once I get with our own
lads in the trenches I'll be the happiest man alive,” wrote Mac.
“Meanwhile, I think a lot of all you dear people. I'm more
than happy in what you tell me of Byrd's success and of the
bairns' and Mary's well being. Give them all my love and
congratulations.”
James turned the last page, and paused. “I think that's about all,” he said.
But it was not all. While the others sat silent for a minute, their thoughts on the great struggle, Farraday's eyes ran again down that last page.