“I said he was a douce man,” sobbed Jean, in the safe shelter of her father’s arms; “but it wass a pittence piper, not one of ours at all.” They say that she felt the deception even more than the bruises on her toes. Her father never managed to thank Mr. Knagg though he called three times.
“Of course the master’s gone to the war with the regiment. He only got six months’ leave, after all, and Miss Jean talks and sings about him all day long, and the mistress just listens. But she says if Master Colin and Master Andrew were older, she’d send them, too; for there’s aye been some of our family for the men to follow.” Elspeth left Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper standing at the wire fence, for she “never encouraged clash.”
In the wintry days her neighbors saw less of Jean, as play in the garden was impossible. But even then the pink feet splashed bravely through the puddles and over the wet stones.
One evening about six, just as Mr. Knagg was turning into the Terrace, a newspaper boy, shouting with raucous voice, proclaimed: “Serious British Reverse!” “’Ighland regiment trapped and cut to pieces!” The old gentleman darted across the road, crying: “Stop that infernal din, and I’ll buy every rag you’ve got! Don’t come down here again, mind!”
He hurried down the Terrace with a great bundle of pink papers under his arm. Just outside his own house he paused and looked up. Jean’s nursery window was open at the top, the curtains were not drawn, and the room was full of rosy light. Suddenly a child’s voice soared into the stillness:
He’s as brave as brave can be; Send him hame, send him hame! He’s as brave as brave can be; Send him hame!
Mr. Knagg took off his hat and bent his head.
“Me an’ the war’s the same age,” said Jasper, for Jasper was born on August 4th, 1914.
Perhaps that was why he manifested such a decided and independent disposition almost from his earliest months.
It may have been that everybody was so busy he was more thrown upon his own resources than are babies in more leisurely times. But whatever the reason, he ran about when he was one, talked fluently--if in somewhat impressionistic fashion--when he was eighteen months old, and by the time he was two he had attained very definite characteristics.