He seemed to see, as in a glass darkly, three
figures pacing slowly along the path which bounded the wide lawn below.
They were Godfrey Radmore, Betty, and with them another whom he knew was
his dear brother, George. George, whom Timmy had never seen since the
day, which to the child now seemed so very long ago, when, rather to his
surprise, his eldest brother had lifted him up in his arms to kiss him
before going out to France at the end of his last leave. And as he gazed
down, tears began to run down his queer little face.
At last he turned away from the window, and as he went towards the door
he saw the outline of a paper pad on the writing table which in old days
George and Godfrey had shared between them.
Blinking away his tears, he took up the pad, and carried it down the
lighted passage to his own room. There he sat down, and with a pencil
stump extracted from his waistcoat pocket, he wrote:
Dear Mum,
This is from Timmy. I hope you don't still feel the pierce.
Your affectionate son,
Timothy Godfrey Radmore Tosswill.
He put the bit of paper into a grubby envelope in which he had for some
time kept some used French stamps; then, licking down the flap, he left
his room and went into his mother's, where he propped up the envelope on
the fat pin-cushion lying on her dressing-table, remembering the while
that so had been propped an anonymous letter written many years before
by a vengeful nursery maid, who had been dismissed at Nanna's wish.
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