“We got something, but it was apt to be queer,” said Jim, laughing. “We used to think of sitting on the table here, Brownie, and eating hot scones—like this. May I have another?”
“My pore dears!” said Brownie, hastily supplying him with the largest scone in sight. “Now, Master Wally, my love, ain't you ready for another? Your appetite's not 'alf wot it used to be. A pikelet, now?”
“I believe I've had six!” said Wally, defending himself.
“An' wot used six pikelets to be to you? A mere fly in the ointment,” said Brownie, whose similes were always apt to be peculiar. “Just another, then, my dear. An' I've got your fav'rite sponge cake, Miss Norah—ten aigs in it!”
“Ten!” said Norah faintly. “Hold me, daddy! Doesn't it make you feel light-headed to think of putting ten eggs in one cake again?”
“An' why not?” sniffed Brownie. “Ah, you got bad treatment in that old England. I never could see why you should go short, an' you all 'elpin' on the war as 'ard as you could.” Brownie's indifference to national considerations where her nurselings were concerned was well known, and nobody argued with her. “Any'ow, the cake's there, an' just you try it—it's as light as a feather, though I do say it.”
Once in the kitchen Norah and the boys went no further. They remained sitting on the tables, talking, while presently David Linton went away to his study, and, one by one, Murty and Boone and Mick Shanahan drifted in. There was so much to tell, so much to ask about; they talked until the dusk of the short winter afternoon stole into the kitchen, making the red flames in the stove leap more redly. It was time to dress for tea. They went round the wide verandas and ran upstairs to their rooms, while old Brownie stood in the kitchen doorway listening to the merry voices.
“Ain't it just 'evinly to 'ear 'em again!” she uttered.
“It is that,” said Murty. “We've been quare an' lonesome an' quiet these five years.”