"Your eyes will be all right by the time you're ready for the Shop. You see crooked just now, you know—and it wants correcting, that's all."
"What?" cried Ger despairingly. "Do I squint?"
"Bless you, no; the sight of your two eyes is different, that's all—when you get proper glasses you'll be right as rain. Lots of people have it . . . if you'd been a Board School you'd have been seen to long ago," he added, more to himself than to Ger.
Then Ger shook hands with the Ram-Corps Angel and walked rather slowly and thoughtfully across the common to grandfather's house though the wind was colder than ever. He forgot to look in at the Shop gate, but the parade ground was empty. The cadets had finished drilling. Ger had been so long in that darkened room.
He had lunch alone with his grannie, for grandfather was lunching at his club. There was no poking of the Ffolliot children into schoolrooms and nurseries for meals when they stayed with the ganpies. His face was clean and his hair very smooth, and he held back Mrs Granny's chair for her just as grandfather did. She stooped and kissed the fresh, friendly little face and told him he was a dear, which was most pleasant.
He was hungry and the roast mutton was very good, moreover he was going to the Zoo that afternoon directly after lunch, grannie's French maid was to take him. They were to have a taxi from Charing Cross, and lunch passed pleasantly, enlivened by the discussion of this enchanting plan.
Presently he asked, apropos of nothing: "Do all the Ram-Corps officers look like angels?"
"Like angels!" Mrs Grantly repeated derisively. "Good gracious, no!
Very plain indeed, some of them I've seen."
"The one at the Cadet Hospital does," Ger said positively, "like a great big angel and a dear."
"Who? Major Murray?" Mrs Grantly inquired, looking puzzled; "where have you seen him?"