“Oh, bother!” said everyone. Cyril adding, “You just go on with the dream for a sec, Mr Jimmy, we’ll be back directly. Nurse’ll come up if we don’t. She wouldn’t think Rekh-marā was a dream.”
Then they went down. Nurse was in the hall, an orange envelope in one hand, and a pink paper in the other.
“Your Pa and Ma’s come home. ‘Reach London 11.15. Prepare rooms as directed in letter’, and signed in their two names.”
“Oh, hooray! hooray! hooray!” shouted the boys and Jane. But Anthea could not shout, she was nearer crying.
“Oh,” she said almost in a whisper, “then it was true. And we have got our hearts’ desire.”
“But I don’t understand about the letter,” Nurse was saying. “I haven’t had no letter.”
“Oh!” said Jane in a queer voice, “I wonder whether it was one of those... they came that night—you know, when we were playing ‘devil in the dark’—and I put them in the hat-stand drawer, behind the clothes-brushes and”—she pulled out the drawer as she spoke—“and here they are!”
There was a letter for Nurse and one for the children. The letters told how Father had done being a war-correspondent and was coming home; and how Mother and The Lamb were going to meet him in Italy and all come home together; and how The Lamb and Mother were quite well; and how a telegram would be sent to tell the day and the hour of their home-coming.
“Mercy me!” said old Nurse. “I declare if it’s not too bad of you, Miss Jane. I shall have a nice to-do getting things straight for your Pa and Ma.”
“Oh, never mind, Nurse,” said Jane, hugging her; “isn’t it just too lovely for anything!”