The Return of the Soldier

The Return of the Soldier

CHAPTER I


"Ah, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in
these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight!
Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting
was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just
leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right."

We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now
that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped
the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room,
so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar,
which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the
house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was
pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so
brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly have been
raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud.
Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft
rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which
should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the
blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been
Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed
what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out
Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the
mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes
that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for
play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing
in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the
woolly whit