“She’s safe,” said Norah, sighing with relief. “There’s an awfully elegant letter from her, saying she’ll come.”
“Oh, that’s good business!” Jim said. For a fortnight Norah had had the unforgettable experience of sitting in registry-offices, attempting to engage a staff for Homewood. She had always been escorted by one or more of her male belongings, and their extreme ignorance of how to conduct the business had been plain to the meanest intelligence. The ex-sergeant, whose spirit of meekness in proposing himself had been in extraordinary contrast to the condescending truculence of other candidates, had been thankfully retained. There had at times seemed a danger that instead of butler he might awake to find himself maid-of-all-work, since not one of the applicants came up to even Norah’s limited standard. Finally, however, Mr. Linton had refused to enter any more registry-offices or to let Norah enter them, describing them, in good set terms as abominable holes; and judicious advertising had secured them a housekeeper who seemed promising, and a cook who insisted far more on the fact that she was a lady than on any ability to prepare meals. The family, while not enthusiastic, was hopeful.
“I hope she’s all right,” Norah said doubtfully. “I suppose we can’t expect much—they all tell you that nearly every servant in England has ‘gone into munitions,’ which always sounds as though she’d get fired out of a trench-mortar presently.”
“Some of those we saw might be benefited by the process,” said Mr. Linton, shuddering at memories of registry-offices.
“Well, what about the rest?—haven’t you got to get a kitchenmaid and some more housemaids or things?” queried Jim vaguely.
“I’m not going to try here,” said Mr. Linton firmly. “Life is too short; I’d sooner be my own kitchenmaid than let Norah into one of those offices again. Allenby’s niece will have to double a few parts at first, and I’ve written to Ireland—to Mrs. Moroney—to see if she can find us two or three nice country girls. I believe she’ll be able to do it. Meanwhile we’ll throw care to the winds. I’ve told Allenby to order in all necessary stores, so that we can be sure of getting something to eat when we go down; beyond that, I decline to worry, or let Norah worry, about anything.”
“Then let’s go out and play,” cried Norah, jumping up.
“Right!” said the boys. “Where?”
“Oh, anywhere—we’ll settle as we go!” said Norah airily. She fled for her hat and coat.
So they went to the Tower of London—a place little known to the English, but of which Australians never tire—and spent a blissful afternoon in the Armoury, examining every variety of weapons and armament, from Crusaders’ chain-mail to twentieth-century rifles. There is no place so full of old stories and of history—history that suddenly becomes quite a different matter from something you learn by the half-page out of an extremely dull book at school. This is history alive, and the dim old Tower becomes peopled with gay and gallant figures clad in shining armour, bent on knightly adventures. There you see mail shirts of woven links that slip like silken mesh through the fingers, yet could withstand the deadliest thrust of a dagger; maces with spiked heads, that only a mighty man could swing; swords such as that with which Coeur-de-Lion could slice through such a mace as though it were no more than a carrot—sinuous blades that Saladin loved, that would sever a down cushion flung in the air. Daggers and poignards, too, of every age, needle-pointed yet viciously strong, with exquisitely inlaid hilts and fine-lined blades; long rapiers that brought visions of gallants with curls and lace stocks and silken hose, as ready to fight as to dance or to make a poem to a fair lady’s eyebrow. Helmets of every age, with visors behind which the knights of old had looked grimly as they charged down the lists at “gentle and joyous passages of arms.” Horse-armour of amazing weight—“I always pictured those old knights prancing out on a thirteen-stone hack, but you’d want a Suffolk Punch to carry that ironmongery!” said Wally. So through room after room, each full of brave ghosts of the past, looking benevolently at the tall boy-soldiers from the New World; until at length came closing-time, and they went out reluctantly, across the flagged yard where poor young Anne Boleyn laid her gentle head on the block; where the ravens hop and caw to-day as their ancestors did in the sixteenth century when she walked across from her grim prison that still bears on its wall a scrawled “Anne.” A dull little prison-room, it must have been, after the glitter and pomp of castles and palaces—with only the rugged walls of the Tower Yard to look upon from the tiny window.