Her father’s voice was not as steady as usual.
“They’re all right?”
“Oh, yes, they must be. It says ‘Better—London to-morrow.’ ”
“Better?” mused Mr. Linton. “I wonder if that means hospital or us, Norah?”
Norah’s face fell.
“I suppose it may be hospital,” she said. “It was so lovely to think they were coming that I nearly forgot that part of it. Can we find out, daddy?”
“We’ll go and try,” Mr. Linton said.
“Now?” said Norah, and jigged on one foot.
“I’ll get my hat,” said her father, departing with a step not so unlike his daughter’s. Norah waited in the corridor for a few minutes, and then, impatient beyond the possibility of further waiting in silence, followed him to his room, there finding him endeavouring to remove London mud-stains from a trouser-leg.
“You might think when you’ve managed to brush it off that it had gone—but indeed it hasn’t,” said David Linton, wrathfully regarding gruesome stains and brushing them with a vigour that should have been productive of better results.