“Invalided home. Ye know what that means?”
Again the nurse nodded.
“Mind ye, there’s been never a word dropped atween us, but we’re all fearin’ it like—” Larry rubbed his sleeve over his mouth twice before he went on. “While we’ve got Jamie to think about, we can manage, but when he’s packed off somewheres—to learn readin’ an’ writin’ for the blind—an’ we’re scattered to the four winds o’ Ireland, we’ll be realizin’ for the first time what we are, just. Then what are we goin’ to do? I ask ye it honest, miss.”
And honestly Sheila answered, “I don’t know.”
A day later “Granny” whispered over his dressings: “Faith there’s a shadow creeping over the sill. Can’t ye be feeling it?” And the color-sergeant’s spirits failed to rise that day at all.
Yet for all their fears the inevitable day came upon them unawares and caught them, as you might say, red-handed. Sheila had stolen a half-hour from rest and was sitting with them, listening to Casey Ryan, the Galway lad, tell of the fishing in Kilkieran Bay.
Larry took the words out of his mouth. “’Twill be the proud day for us all when we cast our eyes on Irish wather again, whether ’tis in Dublin Bay or off the Skerries.”
“Aye, and smelling the thorn bloom and hearing the throstles sing!” “Granny’s” rejoicing followed on the heels of Larry’s, while he shook his fist at him in warning.
Larry threw a helpless look at Jamie and sank back on his pillow, while Patsy roared his ultimatum: “I’d a deal sight rather hear a throstle sing than see all the bloody wather in the world. Larry’s fair mad about wather ever since he went dirty for a fortnight at Vimy.”
“Sure, the thing I’m most wantin’,” croaked “Bertha,” “is to hear the wind in the heather again, deep o’ the night. There isn’t a sweeter sound than that, so soft an’ croony-like.”