“I wish you’d let me alone,” she said peevishly, and Dolly was forced to retire.
[275]
]The keynote of all the trouble was, the child was missing Alf, and without his invigorating companionship was forced to enter into the curious and quieter paths of girlhood that her feet had avoided so long.
[276]
]CHAPTER XXVI
MORE LETTERS
One week’s mail brought seven separate letters from the “German Sausage Land.” It had evidently been a safety-valve for the excited lad to actually seal and post a letter every day, although he was aware the mail service between his longed-for native land and the “wretched foreign hole” where he sojourned would not put itself out of the way to deliver them in any hurry.
Mrs. Wise opened the budget and placed them in serial form, for Alf had at last after earnest entreaty fallen into the habit of putting the date and the name of his abiding city at the head of his letters.
“Wiesbaden,
“May 7th (ran the first).
“Are you listening, all of you? Well, if you can’t understand take the letter up to an asylum and they’ll explain it. I’m just as mad as mad, and so would you be. I’m nearly dead sure we’re coming. Grandfather said first she could go across [277] ]the river to Homburg and she could drink some water there and that would cure her, but she fainted again this morning and she looked jolly bad, I can tell you, and he said he’d see.
“My scrimmy, haven’t I just had a day of it! First of all I cut down to the shops to get you all a present each, I’d got a sovereign to spend.
“I got heaps of things with it,—pincushions and thimbles and books for the girls and a big drum for Freddie and a collidescope affair, and some jolly good marbles for Weenie and some chocolate for her and a pipe for the Pater and a knife for Weenie. Well, it took me nearly all day plugging down to the shops and lugging home the parcels. Then there was supper but you bet I didn’t want any. I just cut up-stairs and packed up everything. It took me nearly all night; it was jolly hard to make everything go in and the drum takes up a lot of room. It’s one o’clock now and I’ve just finished. I won’t be able to have a bath in the morning, I’ve packed my shirts and things in the bath-tub thing that’s like a portmanto, and they haven’t got a bath-room in this house.