“Not the Front, my dear boys!”
“Well, not yet,” said Wally, pumping the hand, and finding Norah’s searching for his free one. “It’s pretty decent, isn’t it? because every one knows there will be plenty of war at the Front yet.”
“Plenty indeed,” said Mr. Linton.
“I say, buck up, old chap,” said Jim, patting Norah’s shoulder very hard. “One would think we were booked for the trenches to-night!”
“I wouldn’t have made an ass of myself if you had been,” said Norah, shaking back her curls and mopping her eyes defiantly. “I was prepared for that, and then you struck me all of a heap! Oh, Jimmy, I am glad! I’d like to hug the War Office!”
“You’re the first person I ever heard with such sentiments,” returned her brother. “Most people want to heave bombs at it. However, they’ve treated us decently, and no mistake. You see, ever since June we’ve kept bothering them to go out, and then getting throat-trouble and having to cave in again; and now that we really are all right I suppose they think they’ll make sure of us. So that’s that.”
“I would have been awfully wild if they hadn’t passed us,” Wally said. “But since they have, and they’ll put us to work, I don’t weep a bit at being kept back for awhile. Lots of chaps seem to think being at the Front is heavenly, but I’m blessed if I can see it that way. We didn’t have very much time there, certainly, but there were only three ingredients in what we did have—mud, barbed wire, and gas.”
“Yes, and it’s not much of a mixture,” said Jim. “All the same, it’s got to be taken if necessary. Still, I’m not sorry it’s postponed for a bit; there will be heaps of war yet, and meanwhile we’re just learning the trade.” He straightened his great shoulders. “I never felt so horribly young and ignorant as when I found grown-up men in my charge in France.”
“Poor old Jimmy always did take his responsibilities heavily,” said Wally, laughing.
Mr. Linton looked at his big son, remembering a certain letter from his commanding officer which had caused him and Norah to glow with pride; remembering, also, how the men on Billabong Station had worked under “Master Jim.” But he knew that soldiering had always been a serious business to his boy. Personal danger had never entered into Jim’s mind; but the danger of ignorant handling of his men had been a tremendous thing to him. Even without “mud, barbed-wire, and gas” Jim was never likely to enjoy war in the light-hearted way in which Wally would certainly take it under more pleasant conditions.