They turned to meet a tall grey man who came swinging across the grass with a step as light as his son’s. David Linton greeted them with a smile.
“I knew I should find you as near as you could get to the horses,” he said. “This place is almost a rest-cure after Harrod’s; I never find myself in that amazing shop without wishing I had a bell on my neck, so that I couldn’t get lost. And I always take the wrong lift and find myself among garden tools when all I want is collars.”
“Well, they have lifts round every corner: you want a special lift-sense not to take the wrong one,” Norah defended him.
“Yes, and when you ask your way anywhere in one of these fifty-acre London shops they say, ‘Through the archway, sir,’ and disappear: and you look round you frantically, and see about seventeen different archways, and there you are,” Wally stated. “So you plunge into them all in turn, and get hopelessly lost. But it’s rather fun.”
“I’d like it better if they didn’t call me ‘Moddam,’” said Norah. “‘Shoes, Moddam? Certainly, Moddam; first to the right, second to the left, lift Number fifteen, fifth floor and the attendant will direct you!’ Then you stagger into space, wishing for a wet towel round your head!”
“I could almost believe,” said her father, regarding her gravely, “that you would prefer Cunjee, with one street, one general store, one blacksmith’s, and not much else at all.”
“Why, of course I do,” Norah laughed. “At least you can’t get lost there, and you haven’t got half a day’s journey from the oatmeal place to the ribbon department: they’ll sell you both at the same counter, and a frying-pan and a new song too! Think of the economy of time and boot-leather! And Mr. Wilkins knows all about you, and talks to you like a nice fat uncle while he wraps up your parcels. And if you’re on a young horse you needn’t get off at all—all you have to do is to coo-ee, and Mr. Wilkins comes out prepared to sell you all his shop on the footpath. If that isn’t more convenient than seventeen archways and fifty-seven lifts, then I’d like to know what is!”
“Moddam always had a great turn of eloquence, hadn’t she?” murmured Wally, eyeing her with respect. Whereat Norah reddened and laughed, and accused him of sentiments precisely similar to her own.
“I think we’re all much the same,” Jim said. “London’s all very well for a visit. But just imagine what it would be if we didn’t know we were going back to Billabong some day!”
“What a horrible idea!” Norah said. “But we are—when the old War’s over, and the Kaiser has retired to St. Helena, and the Huns are busy building up Belgium and France. And you’ll both be captains, if you aren’t brigadiers, and all Billabong will expect to see you come back in uniform glittering with medals and things.”