"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?"
"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell just outside on the pavement, so——"
"Keith, you're to promise you won't go outside until they've gone," called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!"
"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his room.
"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, listening.
Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave.
"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman.
Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' course....
But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that receding turmoil.
"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like that.... He was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, I'm real glad, just for tonight, that Jack can't be up."