"Oh! but he's better, Alan," Elizabeth assured him—"much better than when he left Glasgow; then he did look frail."
"Well, it is good to be home and see all you funny folk again," Alan said contentedly, as he lay back in a most downy and capacious arm-chair. "We don't get chairs like this in dug-outs."
It was a wonderful four days, for everything that had been planned came to pass in the most perfect way, and there was no hitch anywhere.
Alan was in his highest spirits, full of stories of his men and of the life out there. "You don't seem to realize, you people," he kept telling them, "what tremendous luck it is for me coming in for this jolly old war."
He looked so well that Elizabeth's anxious heart was easier than it had been for months. Things couldn't be so bad out there, she told herself, if Alan could come back a picture of rude health and in such gay spirits. On the last night Alan went up with Elizabeth to her room to see, he said, if the fire were cosy, and sitting together on the fender-stool they talked—talked of their father ("Take care of him, Lizbeth," Alan said. "Father is a bit extra, you know. I've yet to find a better man"), of how things had worked out, of Walter in India, of the small Buff asleep next door—one of those fireside family talks which are about the most comfortable things in the world. "I'm glad you came to Etterick, I like to think of you here," Alan said. "Well—I'm off to-morrow again."
"Alan," said Elizabeth, "is it very awful?"
"Well, it isn't a picnic, you know. It's pretty grim sometimes. But I wouldn't be out of it for anything."
"I'll tell you what I wish," said his sister. "I wish you could get a bullet in your arm that would keep you from using it for a long time. And we would get you home to nurse. Oh! wouldn't that be heavenly?"
Alan laughed.
"Nice patriotic creature you are! But seriously, Lizbeth, if I do get knocked out—it does happen now and again, and there is no reason why I should escape—I want you to know that I don't mind. I've had a thoroughly good life. We've had our sad times—and the queer thing is that out there it isn't sad to think about Mother and Sandy: it's comforting, you would wonder!—but when we are happy we are much happier than most people. I haven't got any premonition, you know, or anything like that; indeed, I hope to come bounding home again in spring, but just in case—remember, I was glad to go."