Laura had her secret marvel at it, at these letters, so like and so unlike Justin. Their frequency amazed her: their familiar matter-of-factness made her smile; but there were touches in them beyond her knowledge of him. He did not take his discomforts seriously. There was actually humour—a trifle crude, more than a trifle grim—but humour. Once he made fun of himself. And he was anxious about his mother—eloquent in each letter on the absurdity, nay, the sin, of worrying. And he wanted to know how she slept. Once he said, ‘Tell Laura to look after you!’ He said that! He trusted her, you see, in spite of everything. He trusted her. She lived on that phrase for weeks. And indeed she looked after Mrs. Cloud. She spent more and more of her time at the Priory, bringing her war-work with her, and gradually the control of the reduced household slipped into her hands. Mrs. Cloud’s small ailments increased in frequency, and it was natural that the driven doctor and the anxious maid should turn to Miss Laura rather than to the invalid. And there was Timothy. Timothy, rising five, with ideas of his own (Coral cropping up freakishly in the sound Cloud soil) Timothy, embarrassingly devoted, and a great deal too much for his grandmother, had become a problem: and until the ideal nurse who did not quarrel with Mary and did not want special attention had been discovered (but they were all at munitions) he was inevitably Laura’s business. She undertook, at any rate, to tire him out for a couple of hours every day, after which ‘the temporary,’ a hare-eyed child with adenoids, was supposed to be able to cope with him. Timothy enjoyed that summer. He was always more than ready for his stern Miss Valentine to take him out for a little exercise. Timothy’s idea of exercise was a variant of tip-and-run in the field behind the barns. Timothy tipped and Laura ran. But when human nature dropped at last, protesting, on a haycock, Timothy was always kindly resigned to a rest. He would dig like a terrier at the next cock, till he had shaped ‘a armchair’ into which Laura would be inducted with much ceremony and provided with a dock-leaf fan. These were courtesies for which stories (“true stories, not silly old fairies,” was the typical Cloud proviso) were considered a graceful acknowledgement. Laura, beautifully trained before a week was out, would accordingly parade for his criticism such desperadoes of antiquity as Daniel, Jack the Giant Killer, Oliver Twist, Jonah, and invariably conclude the entertainment, by request, with that favourite legend of her own childhood—‘How Uncle Justin threw the porridge at Miss Beamish!’ “Well——” and Timothy would squirm with excitement, “once upon a time—when Uncle Justin-at-the-war was _quite_ a little boy——” and so on to the enthralling catastrophe: “And there was _poor_ Miss Beamish with her hair all messed——” “He was awful—wasn’t he?” “Awful isn’t the word!” “Umn. Go on.” “Well—that’s about all.” “Is it?” “Yes.”