"Oh, no, thanks."
"That's all right then. Good night."
"Good night. Oh, I say, Mrs. Robson, I've never said thank you yet. I expect you'll think me awfully queer, but I do think you're a brick. I've been a perfect nuisance. I wouldn't have let you do all this only it's so nice to be made a fuss of."
Mary smiled down upon him. She seemed all rosy cheeks and white apron and candlelight.
She told him that there was a glass of water by his side in case he was thirsty in the night, and that if he felt ill John's room and hers was only along the passage.
A sudden desire had seized her to kiss this absurd, fragile boy whose mocking, wistful eyes watched her from the pillows. Only he might mistake her strictly maternal intentions, not realizing, like many young things, how very young he was.
She took up her candle and left him. In the other room John lay solidly on the shadowed bed, large and tranquil and very very different.
She did not stoop to kiss him, though that would have been perfectly proper.
Meanwhile David lay staring into the darkness. He was very tired and stiff, and his throat felt as though some one were rubbing it with hot sand paper. John's large pyjamas were wrinkled below his bruised shoulder.
Thoughts streamed through his brain like sheep through the gap in a hedge. A week had passed since he left Manchester and he had written nothing. Why did the shepherd persistently wink one eye? Was it because "in modern agriculture the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself?" Why, that was Marx! How silly. Good old Marx. He told the truth if no one else did.