"Try to be good to me, Tony, and love me a little ... it's all so hard."
"I'll be good," he said, gravely, "because I promised Mummy ... but I can't love you yet—because—" here Tony sighed deeply, "I don't seem to feel like it."
"Never mind," said Jan, lifting him on to her knee. "Never mind. I'll love you an extra lot to make up."
"And Fay?" he asked.
"And Fay—we must both love Fay more than ever now."
"I do love Fay," Tony said, "because I'm used to her. She's been here a long time...."
Suddenly his mouth went down at the corners and he leant against Jan's shoulder to hide his face. "I do want Mummy so," he whispered, as the slow, difficult tears welled over and fell. "I like so much to look at her."
It was early afternoon, the hot part of the day. The children were asleep and Jan sat on the big sofa, finishing a warm jersey for little Fay to wear towards the end of the voyage. Peter, by means of every scrap of interest he possessed, had managed to secure her a three-berth cabin in a mail boat due to leave within the next fortnight. He insisted that she must take Ayah, who was more than eager to go, and that Ayah
could easily get a passage back almost directly with people he knew who were coming out soon after Jan got home. He had written to them, and they would write to meet the boat at Aden.