"The alert was out for us, of course, and a fierce barrage put up, but I flew high till I was ready for a dive. We'd hardly landed, when the _poilus_ swarmed like bees, but that was what we wanted. You must imagine the scene that followed, till I can tell you by word of mouth!
"I shall have made my report, and have been given leave to start for a visit to my family by to-morrow I hope.
"Yours till the end!" Rather a smart, cynical way of winding up those "exhibition pages" was it not, Padre? The secret translation of that signature is: "Yours, you brute, till I can get rid of you with least damage to my parents' susceptibilities!"
I shall obey, and wait for the interview. It's like waiting to be shot at dawn!
I persuaded Brian to tell Father Beckett. I wasn't worthy. But the dear old man came straight to me, transfigured, to make me go with him to his wife, even before he had finished reading the letter.
"You must come," he said--and when Father Beckett says "must," in a certain tone, one does. It's then that the resemblance, more in expression than feature, between him and his son shines out like a light. "It will save mother the trouble of asking for you," he went on, dragging me joyously with him, his arm round my waist. "She'd do that, first thing, sure! Why, do you suppose we forget Jim's as much to you as to us? Haven't you shown us that, every day since we met?"
Mother Beckett had been lying down for the afternoon nap which by my orders she takes every day. She'd just waked, and was sitting up on the lounge, when her husband softly opened the door to peep in. The only light was firelight, leaping in an open grate.
"Come in, come in!" she greeted us in her silver tinkle of a voice. "Oh, you didn't disturb me. I was awake. I thought I'd ring for tea. But I didn't after all. I'd had such a beautiful dream, I hated to come out of it."
"I bet it was a dream about Jim!" said Father Beckett. He drew me into the room, and the little lady pulled me down beside her on the wide, cushiony lounge. Her husband's special arm-chair was close by, but he didn't subside into it as usual at this cosy hour of the afternoon. Instead, he knelt stiffly down on one knee, and took the tiny, ringed hand held out to him. "You wouldn't think a dream beautiful, unless Jim was in it!"