For Helen, having known this girl, found it not any 180 too easy to believe that her son could have relinquished her completely in so disturbingly brief a time.
Had she been a young man she knew that she would not have done so. And, knowing it, she was troubled.
Meanwhile, her only son was troubled, too, as he walked slowly homeward through the winter fog.
And by the time he was climbing his front steps he had concluded to accept this girl as she was––or thought she was––to pull no more long faces or sour faces, but to go back to her, resolutely determined to enjoy her friendship and her friends too; and give his long incarcerated sense of humour an airing, even if he suffered acutely while it revelled.
CHAPTER XIII
Palla’s activities seemed to exhilarate her physically and mentally. Body and brain were now fully occupied; and, if the profit to her soul were dubious, nevertheless the restless spirit of the girl now had an outlet; and at home and in the Combat Club she planned and discussed and investigated the world’s woes to her ardent heart’s content.
Physically, too, Red Cross and canteen work gave her much needed occupation; and she went everywhere on foot, never using bus, tram or taxicab. The result was, in spite of late and sometimes festive hours, that Palla had become something more than an unusually pretty girl, for there was much of real beauty in her full and charming face and in her enchantingly rounded yet lithe and lissome figure.
About the girl, also, there seemed to be a new freshness like fragrance––a virginal sweetness––that indefinable perfume of something young and vigorous that is already in bud.