“I didn’t ever want to get out,” Geoffrey confided to Norah, as they went up the steps to the open door of Homewood. “That kind man let me hold the end of the reins. And he says he’ll show me more horses to-morrow.”
“There’s a pony too—we’ll teach you to ride it,” said Mr. Linton. Whereat Geoffrey gasped with joy and became speechless.
“Well—have you got them all tucked up?” asked Mr. Linton, when Norah joined him in the morning-room an hour later.
“Oh, yes; they were so tired, poor mites. Bride helped me to bathe them, and we fed them all on bread and milk—with lots of cream. Michael demanded “Mummy,” but he was too sleepy to worry much. But; Dad—Geoff wants you badly to say ‘good-night.’ He says his own Daddy always says it to him when he’s in bed. Would you mind?”
“Right,” said her father. He went upstairs, with Norah at his heels, and tiptoed into the big room where two of his three small guests were already sleeping soundly. He looked very tall as he stood beside the little bed in the corner. Geoff’s bright eyes peeped up at him.
“It was awful good of you to come,” he said sleepily. “Daddy does. He says, ‘Good night, old chap, and God bless you.’”
“Good night, old chap, and God bless you,” said David Linton gravely. He held the small hand a moment in his own, and then, stooping, brushed his forehead with his lips.
“God bless you,” said Geoff’s drowsy voice. “I’m going—going to ride the pony . . . to-morrow.” His words trailed off in sleep.
CHAPTER VII
THE THATCHED COTTAGE
But for the narrow white beds, you would hardly have thought that the big room was a hospital ward. In days before all the world was caught into a whirlpool of war it had been a ballroom. A famous painter had made the vaulted ceiling an exquisite thing of palest blush-roses and laughing Cupids, tumbling among vine-leaves and tendrils. The white walls bore long panels of the same design. There were no fittings for light visible: when darkness fell, the touch of a button flooded the room with a soft glow, coming from some unseen source in the carved cornice. The shining floor bore heavy Persian rugs, and there were tables heaped with books and magazines; and the nurses who flitted in and out were all dainty and good to look at. All about the room were splendid palms in pots; from giants twenty feet high, to lesser ones the graceful leaves of which could just catch the eye of a tired man in bed—fresh from the grim ugliness of the trenches. It was the palms you saw as you came in—not the beds here and there among them.