"I saw a man, aunt, amongst the soldiers, whom I knew very well in Egypt. He was Freddy's best friend. I haven't seen him since. I wonder if he knows that Freddy is dead? I wanted to speak to him if I could."
"And did you?"
"No." Margaret's voice trembled. "He had got into the train. The men were packed like sardines, and I couldn't find him. It left punctually to the minute—I hadn't much time to look."
Her aunt noticed the emotion in Margaret's voice. The woman in her longed to put a motherly arm round the girl as she stood beside her, but her training and national reserve prevented it. So instead of letting her niece see how generous her sympathy was, she said, in rather a strident voice, the result of her suppressed feeling:
"There is a good cup of coffee waiting for you in the small brown pot, and you'll find some egg-sandwiches on a plate on the high shelf above the tumbler-cupboard. Go and eat them at once, before a fresh lot of men come in."
"Oh, I don't want anything," Margaret said pleadingly. "Let me help you wash all these cups, please do, aunt. I really don't want anything to eat."
"Whether you want it or not, I insist upon your eating it. Go now, at once, don't waste time."
Her niece obeyed meekly. When her aunt talked like that, and brought those tones into her voice, Margaret instantly lapsed back into her childhood. She was once more the little black sheep of Kingdom-come, the little black sheep who, at the death of her parents, had very quickly learned to fear rather than to love the various paternal relatives who had considered it their duty to bring her up in the way a Lampton should go.
If Margaret's aunt could only have brought herself to speak to her niece as she many times spoke to strangers of her, how different things might have been between them! But this God-fearing woman never did. She was too God-fearing and too little God-loving. She still clung tenaciously to the old order of things, to the method of rearing girls and responding to human nature which had been considered wise in her young days.
While she dried the tea-cups, with a genuine feeling of sympathy for Margaret in her heart, for she was convinced that this man's going to the Front had upset her pretty niece, and while Margaret ate her sandwiches and drank her coffee because she had been bidden to do so, Michael's train was carrying him through the dark night. He was sitting in the corridor, on the top of his kit, lost in thought. He had missed his chance of getting a seat in any of the overcrowded carriages by his delay in the free-refreshment-room. But what did it matter? He was accustomed to discomfort, to unutterable hardships.