“Nothing in the main. But you know I’ve been bothered for some weeks over that business of the English property your uncle Andrew left me. There is a lot of complicated detail that would take me a week to explain—it’s all in the lawyer’s letters over there, if you’d care to go through them. (“Not me!” from Jim, hurriedly.) Some of it ought to be sold, and some apparently can’t be sold just now, and there are decisions to be made, at which it’s almost impossible for me to arrive, with letters alone to go upon. Last week’s English mail left me in a state of complete uncertainty as to what I ought to do about it.”
“And has to-day’s mail straightened out matters at all?”
“Well—it has,” said Mr. Linton, with a wry smile. “I can’t say it has exactly eased my mind, but at least the letters have made one thing abundantly clear, which is that the business cannot be settled from Australia. I’m needed on the spot. As far as I can see, there is no way out of it; I’ll have to go home.”
“Go to England!”
“Yes.”
“But,” Jim was on his feet, his face radiant. “Why, you’ll be there when I’m in France—we might come home together! How ripping, Dad! When would you go?”
“Very soon, I think.”
Jim sat down, the flash of joy suddenly dying away.
“Dad—what about Norah?”
“I wish I knew,” said his father, uneasily. “I could leave her at school, of course; and she has always invitations enough for twice as many holidays as are in the year. But she won’t like it, poor little girl. It would be bad enough if only one of us were going; as it is, she will feel that the bottom has dropped out of the universe.”