'You looked different in pyjamas,' she said, and the flood of reminiscence burst. He had crashed at Brooklands in 1914, and lain for a fortnight in her ward. She remembered, amused, how his eyes had followed her about the room, and his boyish efforts to make conversation. She had liked him and was sorry when he was moved to another hospital.
'This is the most marvellous thing that ever happened,' he exclaimed. 'How can we celebrate it in the forest?'
'Only lunch, I'm afraid,' she said. 'It's ready on the farm. My husband's away on ulendo'—at the memory her temper flamed—'but we'll manage alone.'
'Thanks awfully,' he said, and limped alongside of her. I don't know whether his wound had stiffened during the halt, but he leaned more heavily on his stick.
'You're lame,' she remarked.
Ward explained that he had been bitten on the foot by some anonymous insect, and the day's march had rubbed the wound into a sore.
'It's an awful nuisance on ulendo,' he added, and then—Dick was never the lad to lose anything for want of trying—'I'd been meaning, as I came along, to ask your husband to put me up for a couple of days, till I was right.'
Norah considered Dick for a moment, as women can, without looking at him. She had liked him well in hospital days and had been flattered by his obvious adoration. Then the changes and chances of life had wiped his picture clean from her mind till now his presence brought up details buried seven years deep—his bed in the corner of the ward, a passing irritation at a pretty girl's visit, the chrysanthemums she left.
She made up her mind.
'Mrs. Grundy hasn't got farther north than the railway will take her,' she said. 'You'll find a rest camp all ready by the new house across the river. You'll come over to meals, of course,' she added as his face fell. She felt a momentary awkwardness and changed the conversation to shooting, of which she said she did not get as much as she liked, since Archie could not often spare the time, and did not like her going far afield alone.