'They're really quite nice, Meg, the Reverend Mister has a heart of gold. She's solid gold right through, only you know, little 'un, those very gold people do have funny clothes and shoes sometimes. I'm afraid she's rather inclined to think that curly hair is "wicked." I don't know what she'd say to yours, Meg, but then the children of the clergy always go quickest to the dogs; you've said that heaps of times, so of course it must be right.'
He finished up:—
'Good-bye, darling, don't forget that whatever the next few months may bring you, "underneath are the Everlasting Arms."'
Daddy is such a comfortable person, he doesn't, like Aunt Amelia, jaw about the war and say it's 'a judgment' every time he writes. When it first broke out he said that God seemed to be speaking to the world with great vigour about something, and was I listening for the bit He meant for me?
Really, when you come to think of it, arms are nice things when one is tired. War makes one tired, all women hate it. I wish Michael wasn't in France. I wish he could have seen his way to take the staff job he was offered.
CHAPTER III
I have had such a glorious sleep! The gardener's cat wasn't in it, but the earwig was—in my bed—and Nannie wouldn't let me kill it because 'earwigs are such good mothers.'
Oh, what bliss a bed is after a bunk, the joy of a motor hoot instead of a fog horn, and the sight of a house opposite one's windows instead of a sickening swirl of green water and sky.
But I felt rather at a loose end, and when Nannie came in with my breakfast I said,—
'I wonder what I'd better do to-day?'