Little Herbert, all clumsiness and fat legs and arms, did a good deal of hugging and squealing, and Miss Shake, Leonard's old governess, wept discreetly and worshipfully in the background.
"Look at 'im! Ain't he grand? Glory be to God--bless 'im, my baby!" cried Irish Nannie, who had suckled this soldier of England; and loudly she wept, her pride and her joy unrebuked and unashamed.
At the risk of annoying Leonard, they must follow him about, waiting upon him at tea-time, touching him wistfully, wonderingly, for was it not himself, their own Leonard, who had come back to them for a few days? And instead of himself, it might have been just a name,--Leonard Leeds,--one among a list of hundreds of others; and written opposite each name one of the three words, _Wounded, Missing, Dead_.
Jealously his own family drew aside and let Marjorie go upstairs with him alone. She had the first right; she was his bride. Mr. Leeds plucked little Herbert back by his sailor collar and put his arm through his wife's. Together they watched the two slender figures ascending the broad stair-case. Each parent was thinking, "He's hers now, and they're young. We mustn't be selfish, they have such a short time to be happy in, poor dears."
"Looks fit, doesn't he?" said the father, cheerfully, patting his wife's arm. Inwardly he was thinking, "How fortunate no woman can appreciate all that boy has been through!"
"Do you think so? I thought he looked terribly thin," she answered, absently. To herself she was saying, "No one--not even his father--will ever know what that boy has seen and suffered."
Little Herbert, watching with big eyes, suddenly wriggled his hand from his father's grasp.
"Wait, Leonard, wait for me! I am coming!"
Upstairs old Nannie was officiating. She was struggling with Leonard's kit, which resembled, she thought, more the rummage box of a gypsy pedler than the luggage of a gentleman.
The young officer had taken off his great-coat and was standing with his back to the hearth. He loomed up very big in the demure room, a slender, boyish figure, still too slim for his shoulder-width and height, clad in a ragged uniform, a pistol bulging from one hip at his belt. He looked about him at the bright hangings, with a wandering gaze that reverted to a spot of sunlight on Marjorie's hair and rested there.