"He'll be adjutant presently, you'll see," said Captain Jarvice, keeping on his own line.
I laid my hand very softly against his wounded shoulder.
"Captain Jarvice, can't you see that in spite of all its horror this war has done some good? It has made men and women of us all. You don't hear people complaining of pin-pricks now, as they used to do. And it has given us all hearts, instead of only a gizzard in the heart's place."
A week or two later Little Yeogh Wough himself came home on that first leave to which his father and his sister and his naval cadet brother and I had been looking forward with such panting eagerness.
"Why, you look like a German, Roland!" was the frank greeting of that younger brother, standing up in the hall to welcome him with all the self-confidence of one who wore the dark blue of the premier Service.
"I do, do I? That's because I've got my hair cropped, I suppose. And I expect you think a lot of yourself because you've got into the Navy. But anyhow, here I am, and I'm not a German, whatever I may look like."
With his arm round me and mine round him, he moved across the hall, giving his gay little greetings that had a catch in the throat behind them. There was an answering catch in his father's throat, and a little tremble in all our voices. Then we noticed at last how deadly tired out he looked. He laughed when we told him of it.
"I've been on my feet for forty-eight hours—and in any case I never manage to get more than four hours' sleep a night, even in billets. But a good sleep here to-night will soon put me right. I think I'll have a hot bath now and go to bed directly after dinner. You'll come and see me in bed, mother?"