“You’ve been gone long, Noreen,” he said. “’Tis a queer thing that comes over a man with the years, deere. I was thinking this afternoon of going away for a year—the thought of it! It’s all gone from me. Old Jerry is off to the wars no more, unless they furnish portable pavilions for the women of the correspondents.”
She knew that his liveliness was unnatural, but so much of her work was mere service for the tragic effacement of a loved one, that she brightened responsively to his slightest mental activity. Dinner was nearly over when the door-bell rang. Noreen left her father at the table and admitted Johnny Brodie, leading him into the sitting-room.
He removed his cap carefully, uncovering a noble achievement of water, wrought against gritty odds, with a certain treasured pair of military brushes. The cap was carelessly stuck in his pocket. His shoes—but the blacking of Bookstalls and many other roads had the start of months and asserted itself before the drying fire above the recent veneer of the stranger brand. Johnny Brodie looked captured and uncomfortable, so that Noreen despaired to win him. Had he been older or younger, she could not have failed; but there he sat, a male creature all deformed by years and emotions, precocities and vacuities—a stained and handicapped little nobleman, all boy, and all to the good.
“We haven’t heard from the Man, either, Johnny,” she said. “We are terribly worried about him and awfully interested. I know he was very fond of you, and I hoped you could tell us something about him. Did you know him long?”
“Nope.” The boy wondered who else was included in the “we.”
“But that morning you seemed to have such a fine and complete understanding. Did you often spend a night with him?”
“Nope. We was fren’s, though. ’E’s the right sort. Gives me a bloomin’ Tommy’s harmy blanket to sleep in, and wen I goes to get into me boots—they’re filled wit bobs an’ tanners. I looks up, an’ ’e’s grinnin’—as if ’e didn’t know as to ’ow they got there.”
It was all replenishment to her veins. “And didn’t he go to sleep that night, Johnny?” she asked softly.
“’Ow should I know?” he demanded innocently.
“I thought maybe you’d know. He told me—that is, I know he had a visitor besides you that night.”