A Minstrel in France

by Sir Harry Lauder

"They'll be needing me, out there," he said. "They're needing men. I must go back so soon as I can. Every man is needed there."

"You'll be needing your strength back before you can be going back, son," I told him. "If you fash and fret it will take you but so much the longer to get back."

He knew that. But he knew things I could not know, because I had not seen them. He had seen things that he saw over and over again when he tried to sleep. His nerves were shattered utterly. It grieved me sore not to spend all my time with him but he would not hear of it. He drove me back to my work.

"You must work on, Dad, like every other Briton," he said. "Think of the part you're playing. Why you're more use than any of us out there—you're worth a brigade!"

So I left him on the Clyde, and went on about my work. But I went back to Dunoon as often as I could, as I got a day or a night to make the journey. At first there was small change of progress. John would come downstairs about the middle of the day, moving slowly and painfully. And he was listless; there was no life in him; no resiliency or spring.

"How did you rest, son?" I would ask him. He always smiled when he answered.

"Oh, fairly well," he'd tell me. "I fought three or four battles though, before I dropped off to sleep."

He had come to the right place to be cured, though, and his mother was the nurse he needed. It was quiet in the hills of the Clyde, and there was rest and healing in the heather about Dunoon. Soon his sleep became better and less troubled by dreams. He could eat more, too, and they saw to it, at home, that he ate all they could stuff into him.

So it was a surprisingly short time, considering how bad he had looked when he first came back to Dunoon, before he was in good health and spirits again. There was a bonnie, wee lassie who was to become Mrs. John Lauder ere so long—she helped our boy, too, to get back his strength.

Soon he was ordered from home. For a time he had only light duties with the Home Reserve. Then he went to school. I laughed when he told me he had been ordered to school, but he didna crack a smile.