“Wally will write as soon as he can,” Norah added.
“Yes, of course. The others want me to say, sir, of course they will go away. They all understand. I can go too, just to the hotel. I can supervise Hawkins from there.”
“I hope none of you will think of doing any such thing,” David Linton said. “Our work here is just the same. Jim would never have wished us not to carry on.”
“But——” Hardress began.
“There isn’t any ‘but.’ Norah and I are not going to sit mourning, with our hands in front of us. We mean to work a bit harder, that’s all. You see”—the ghost of a smile flickered across the face that had aged ten years in a night—“more than ever now, whatever we do for a soldier is done for Jim.”
Hardress made a curious little gesture of protest.
“And I’m left—half of me!”
“You have got to help us, Phil,” Norah said. “We need you badly.”
“I can’t do much,” he said. “But as long as you want me, I’m here. Then I’m to tell the others, sir——”
“Tell them we hope they will help us to carry on as usual,” said David Linton. “I’ll come across with you presently, Phil, to look at the new cultivator: I hear it arrived last night.”