“Will I?” The boy looked scornfully at his thin legs. “Look at them—they’re like silly sticks!”
“Yes, but Brecon won’t mind that. And they’ll get quite fat again. Well, not fat—” as Geoffrey showed symptoms of horror—“but hard and fit, like they were before. Quite useful.”
“I do hope so,” Geoffrey said. “I want them to be all right before Father comes—and Wally. Will Wally come soon, do you think?”
“I’m afraid not: you see, he has been to Paris. There’s hardly any leave to England now.”
“’Praps leave will be open by Christmas,” Geoffrey suggested hopefully. “Wouldn’t it be a lovely Christmas if Father and Wally both came?”
“Wouldn’t it just?” Norah smiled at him; but the smile faded in a moment, and she walked to the window and stood looking out. Christmas had always been such a perfect time in their lives: she looked back to years when it had always meant a season of welcoming Jim back; when every day for weeks beforehand had been gay with preparations for his return from school. Jim would arrive with his trunks bulging with surprises for Christmas morning; Wally would be with him, both keen and eager for every detail in the life of the homestead, just as ready to work as to play. All Billabong, from the Chinese gardener to Mr. Linton, hummed with the joy of their coming. Now, for the first time, Christmas would bring them nothing of Jim.
She felt suddenly old and tired; and the feeling grew in the weeks that followed, while Geoffrey gradually came back to strength and merriment, and the cottage, after a strenuous period of disinfecting, emerged from the ban of quarantine. Alison and Michael had a rapturous reunion with their mother and Geoffrey, and Homewood grew strangely quiet without the patter of their feet. Norah returned to her post as housekeeper, to find little to do; the house seemed to run on oiled wheels, and Miss de Lisle and the servants united in trying to save her trouble.
“I dunno is it the fever she have on her,” said Katty in the kitchen one evening. “She’s that quiet and pale-looking you wouldn’t know her for the same gerrl.”
“Oh, there’s no fear of fever now,” said Miss de Lisle.
“Well, she is not right. Is it fretting she is, after Masther Jim? She was that brave at first, you’d not have said there was any one dead at all.”