"I do feel such a looney," she admitted, cheerfully. "To tell you the truth, ma'am, I've never been out of Greenwich before, and now I've got to find my way to a railway station up in London. My man's coming home on leave, and he expects me and the kids to meet him. And we want to meet him, because if we don't he may come across other friends, and—Well, you know what soldier chaps are, don't you?"
I read the pencilled note she held in her hand. Millwood was upstairs, resting his voice. I put on my hat and coat in the back room, and called out a direction to him.
"I'll pilot you up there," I said, "and look after you until your husband arrives!"
The children were excited on the journey, wondering what Dad would look like, and what Dad would bring for them, and how long Dad would be able to remain at home, and how many Germans Dad had accounted for, and whether—the great question—whether he would take them to a picture palace. The woman herself was almost off her head with delight at the prospect of seeing her husband again. I remember she carried a small hand-bag with an unreliable catch; it contained all his letters and post cards, and I should think I rescued it from the floor twenty times.
"Without your help, ma'am," she declared gratefully at the London station, "I sh'd no more had been able to get here than nothing at all."
The boat train was due in ten minutes; we waited in the crowd near the barrier, the youngsters dancing about expectantly, and too much engaged to test the automatic machines. The tallest of us in the crowd presently saw the engine approaching, and we made the announcement; the crowd surged to and fro, chuckling and delighted.
"I shall scarcely know him, I expect," said my agitated companion, "after all these months."
Mud-covered soldiers began to alight from the train ere it stopped; cries of identification went up from people near to us.
"That's my Jim," she exclaimed. And, contradicting herself, "No, it ain't. Same height though. This must be him, coming along now. No," disappointedly. "That ain't him, neither!"