“I should love to come,” she said. “But you’d better not put it that way, or Eva will be dreadfully injured.”
“I don’t—to Eva,” smiled Mrs. Hunt. “She thinks you come over in case she should need any one to run an errand, and therefore permits herself to adore you. In fact, she told me yesterday, that for a young lady you had an uncommon amount of sense!”
“Jim would have said that was as good as a diploma,” Norah said, laughing.
“I rather think so, myself,” Mrs. Hunt answered. “What about Wally, Norah? Have you heard lately?”
“Yesterday,” Norah replied. “He decorated his letter with beautiful people using pen-wipers, so I suppose he is near Ypres. He says he’s very fit. But the fighting seems very stiff. I’m not happy about Wally.”
“Do you think he isn’t well?”
“I don’t think his mind is well,” said Norah. “He was better here, before he went back, but now that he is out again I believe he just can’t bear being without Jim. He can’t think of him happily, as we do; he only fights his trouble, and hates himself for being alive. He doesn’t say so in words, but when you know Wally as well as Dad and I do, you can tell from his letters. He used to write such cheery, funny letters, and now he deliberately tries to be funny—and it’s pretty terrible.”
She paused, and suddenly a little sob came. Mrs. Hunt stroked her hand, saying nothing.
“Do you know,” Norah said presently, “I think we have lost Wally more than Jim. Jim died, but the real Jim is ever close in our hearts, and we never let him go, and we can talk and laugh about him, just as if he was here. But the real Wally seems to have died altogether, and we’ve only the shell left. Something in him died when he saw Jim killed. Mrs. Hunt—do you think he’ll ever be better?”
“I think he will,” Mrs. Hunt said. “He is too fine and plucky to be always like this. You have to remember that he is only a boy, and that he had the most terrible shock that could come to him. It must take time to recover.”