“We’ve been so anxious,” she repeated. “I went to Easter’s, and she said you’d parted ever so long ago. Why did you go off by yourself like that?”
Chris was half in, half out of his sailor blouse by this time, and mumbled something about having got tired of Easter.
Miss Radley didn’t worry him much with questions, nor did she comment severely upon his dirty state. She was extraordinarily kind and got her hands all over mud in helping him to take off his boots; and it was not until he was lying luxuriously in a hot bath that it struck him as odd that his mother didn’t come to him. All the time, too, he had the feeling that Miss Radley wanted to tell him something and yet she couldn’t seem to begin.
“Where’s mummy?” he asked at last. “Isn’t she back yet? I wish she’d come and talk to me.”
Miss Radley looked queerly at him, almost as though she were going to cry. “Chris dear,” she said, and waited for quite a long time, “mummy has had to go away....”
“Away! For the night? Where to? Why?”
“Chris dear”—again Miss Radley seemed to find it difficult to go on—“she had a telegram, just after you went out, from the War Office, asking her to go at once. Your father is in a hospital at Boulogne, very ill ... wounded.”
“Dangerously wounded?” asked Chris, who was familiar with war terms.
Miss Radley nodded, and two tears ran down her cheeks. “That’s what it said.”
“I think,” said Chris, “I’d like to get out of this bath now.”