He hardly knew his wife. Time seemed to have turned back for her. There was not a wrinkle on her skin, the sharp winters had given a bloom like girlhood's to her cheeks, and the varied life and rest from domestic worries had brought the spring back into her blood.
The wife who had gone away had been shrinking, careworn; she had worn shabby bonnets of her own trimming, dresses she had turned and turned about again. This one had the quiet, assured manner of a woman accustomed to travel. She wore a tailor-made fawn coat and skirt, whose very severity accentuated their style. There was the hall-mark of Paris on her bonnet of violets.
Cameron sent a fleeting thought of gratitude to Mortimer, who had made it possible for his own clothes not to blush beside such garments. They were a quiet little party, and Challis did most of the talking. Cameron looked at his wife when she was occupied with the tea-cups; her searching eyes fastened on him when he turned to speak to his little daughter.
Once, when he passed a plate to Challis, she noticed his hands against the snow of the tablecloth—hands she did not know at all, so rough and weather-marked and deeply brown they were. But she asked no question; instinctively she felt there was something to be told to her, and she hung back from the knowledge, knowing the telling would be pain to him.
'Oh dear,' said Challis, 'if only you had brought Bart down, too, daddie, and he was sitting just here on this chair next to me!'
'I thought it was Hermie you wanted most,' the mother said.
'Ah, Hermie! I want Hermie to sleep with. No, not to sleep with, for we sha'n't shut our eyes at all, but just to lie in the dark and talk and talk.'
'Roly wanted to come,' Cameron said. 'He's war mad, of course. He's painted the name Transvaal Vale on the sliprails.'
'On the what?' said Mrs. Cameron.
Cameron went darkly red.