“Good idea!” said Mr. Linton, cutting across Mrs. Hunt’s protest. “Do come—I know Norah is longing to be asked to meet the family, and that will give you time to fix it up.” He over-ruled any further objections by the simple process of ignoring them, whereupon the Hunts wisely gave up manufacturing any more: and presently they had discovered two taxis, Norah and her father taking Mrs. Hunt in the first, leaving the three soldiers to follow in the second. They slid off through the traffic of Fleet Street.
“We really shouldn’t let you take possession of us like this,” said Mrs. Hunt a little helplessly. “But it has been so lovely to see Douglas cheerful again. He has not laughed so much for months.”
“You are anxious about his hand?” David Linton asked.
“Yes, very. He has had several kinds of treatment for it, but it doesn’t seem to get better; and the pain is wearing. The doctors say his best chance is a thorough change, as well as treatment, but we can’t manage it—the three babies are expensive atoms. Now there is a probability of another operation to his hand, and he has been so depressed about it, that I dragged him out to dinner in the hope of cheering him up. But I don’t think I should have succeeded if we hadn’t met you.”
“It was great luck for us,” Norah said. “The boys have always told us so much of Major Hunt. He was ever so good to them.”
“He told me about them, too,” said Mrs. Hunt. “He liked them because he said he never succeeded in boring them!”
“Why, you couldn’t bore Jim and Wally!” said Norah, laughing. Then a great idea fell upon her, and she grew silent, leaving the conversation to her companions as the taxi whirred on its swift way through the crowded streets until they drew up before the theatre.
In the vestibule she found her father close to her and endeavoured to convey many things to him by squeezing his arm very hard among the crowd, succeeding in so much that Mr. Linton knew perfectly well that Norah was the victim of a new idea—and was quite content to wait to be told what it was. But there was no chance of that until the evening was over, and they had bade farewell to the Hunts, arranging to have tea with them next day: after which a taxi bore them to the Kensington flat, and they gathered in the sitting-room while Norah brewed coffee over a spirit-lamp.
“I’m jolly glad we met the Hunts,” Jim said. “But isn’t it cruel luck for a man like that to be kept back by a damaged hand!”
“Rough on Mrs. Hunt, too,” Wally remarked. “She looked about as seedy as he did.”