She thought she heard a little sigh from the bed. Jenny! ... quick and warm came to Deb realisation of the blessed solace of a companion in suffering. Jenny would just understand, as she never failed to understand the simple everyday things such as hunger and pain and the loss of love. Jenny would heal her with that wonderful touch of hand and cheek that was like balm.... Deb felt shivery and childish and desolate.... She laid her head down on Jenny’s breast, and lay for several moments quite still, waiting for comfort to steal into her. She was glad that Jenny did not attempt to talk about what had happened.
Suddenly Deb started away, wildly frightened. Why—Jenny’s heart was not beating....
CHAPTER VI
I
Richard found his Easter holidays dull. Montagu Hall was not a satisfactory substitute for Daisybanks, where he had owned his own carpentering shed in the garden, in which he might rampage as he pleased. Ferdie had been an understanding father in supplying Richard and Deb with full facilities to rag and to rampage. Now Richard passed most of his time reading books that dealt with the practical side of the war, and keeping fit in preparation for when he was eighteen. Perhaps he could squeeze himself in next year already by mis-stating his age ... there was always the dreadful possibility that the war might suddenly come to an end, and leave him what it had found him, a Winborough fifth form boy.
He was glad when the last week of the holidays came round; Deb was always about with some girl—Antonia Verity; and most of his chums being older than himself, were scattered about the country in training, or else in the trenches. David Rothenburg, of course, was about the same age; but Rothenburg was a moony sort of chap, especially lately. More from boredom than affection, Richard spent an afternoon at Bertie Fraser’s home in the south-west of London. The news of the torpedoing of the Lusitania had come through a couple of days before; and the two boys vented some of their hot indignation by experiments with a model submarine which should “damn well teach the blackguards not to mess about with our passenger liners!”
“I’ll put you on your way,” Fraser volunteered, when Richard had to go.
They turned from the quiet street of houses into a mews; then through a slum displaying barrows with highly-coloured wares, gaudy with small shops gustily illuminated, raucous with slatternly women calling from the upper windows to their offspring in the gutters.