“I love you, more than Agatha, more than Dick, more than any one 'cept Daddy and Mummy.”
“You'll be a good boy until I come back?”
“Promise ... but come back soon.”
Peter gave him a long kiss and left him. Supposing, one day, he had a boy like that? A little boy in a shirt like that? Wouldn't it be simply too wonderful? A boy to give soldiers to....
He went across to Miss Monogue's door. A faint voice answered his knock and, entering the room, the scent of medicine and flowers that he always connected with his mother, met him. Norah Monogue, very white, with dark shadows beneath her eyes, was lying on the sofa by the fire.
Mrs. Brockett had prepared her for Peter's coming and she smiled up at him with her old smile and gave him her hand. How thin and white it was with its long slender fingers! He sat down by her sofa and he knew by the way that she looked at him that she was reproaching him—
“Naughty Peter,” she said, “all these months and you have been nowhere near us.”
“I, too, have a bone—you never sent me a word about my wedding.”
She turned her head away. “I was frightfully ill just then. They didn't think I'd pull through. I did write afterwards to Clare, I told her how ill I'd been—”
“She never told me.”