In the tumult of the Strand Norah slipped a hand into her father’s. Very seldom did he speak of the one who was always in his memory: the little mother who had grown tired, and had slipped out of life when Norah was a baby.
“Let’s go there, daddy,” she begged.
“We’ll consult the boys,” said Mr. Linton. “Eh, but it’s good to think we shall have them to consult with to-morrow! You know, Norah, since Jim left school, I’ve become so used to consulting him on all points, that I feel a lost old man without him.”
“You’ll never be old!” said his daughter, indignantly. “But Jim just loves you to talk to him the way you do,—I know he does, only, of course, he’s quite unable to say so.”
“Jim has lots of sense,” said Jim’s father. “So has Wally, for that matter: there is plenty of shrewdness hidden somewhere in that feather-pate of his. They’re very reliable boys. I was ‘thinking back’ the other night, and I don’t remember ever having been really angry with Jim in my life.”
“I should think not!” said Norah, regarding him with wide eyes of amazement. “Why would you be angry with him?”
“Why, I don’t know,” said her father rather helplessly. “Jim never was a pattern sort of boy.”
“No, but he had sense,” said Norah. She began to laugh. “Oh, I don’t know how it is,” she said. “We’ve all been mates always: and mates don’t get angry with each other, or they wouldn’t be mates.”
“I suppose that’s it,” Mr. Linton said, accepting this comprehensive description of a bush family standpoint. “There’s a ’bus that will go our way, Norah: I’ve had enough of elbowing my way through this crowd.”
They climbed on top of the motor-’bus, and found the front seat empty; and when Norah was on the front seat of a ’bus she always felt that it was her own private equipage and that she owned London. To their left was the huge yard of Charing Cross Station, crowded with taxis and cabs and private motors, with streams of foot passengers pouring in and out of the gateways. At Charing Cross one may see in five minutes more foreigners than one meets in many hours in other parts of London, and this was especially the case since the outbreak of war. Homesick Belgian refugees were wont to stray there, to watch the stream of passengers from the incoming Continental trains, hoping against hope that they might see some familiar face. There were soldiers of many nations; unfamiliar uniforms were dotted throughout the crowd, besides the khaki that coloured every London street. Even from the ’bus-top could be heard snatches of talk in many languages—save only one often heard in former days: German. A string of recruits, each wearing the King’s ribbon, swung into the station under a smart recruiting sergeant: a cheery little band, apparently relieved that the plunge had at last been taken, and that they were about to shoulder their share of the nation’s work.