Moreover, there was London; and London, with all that it meant to them, was worth a struggle. Two months earlier it had bored them exceedingly, and nothing had seemed worth while, with the call in their blood to be out in the trenches. Now, after actual experience of the trenches, their ideas had undergone a violent change. The romance of war had faded utterly. The Flying Corps might retain it still—those plucky fighting men who soared and circled overhead, bright specks in the clouds and the blue sky; but to the men who grubbed underground amid discomfort, smells, and dirt, to which actual fighting came as a blessed relief, war had lost all its glamour. They wanted to see the job through. But London was coming first, and it had blossomed suddenly into a paradise. Some of which Jim had tried to put into his shaky pencilled notes; and the certainty of their boys’ gladness to get back lay warm at the hearts of Norah and her father as they walked along Piccadilly. Spring was in the air: the Park had been full of people, the Row crowded with happy children, scurrying up and down the tan on their ponies, with decorous grooms endeavouring to keep them in sight. The window-boxes in the clubs were gay with daffodils and hyacinths: the busy, knowing London sparrows twittered noisily in the budding trees, making hurried arrangements for setting up housekeeping in the summer. Even though war raged so close to England, and its shadow lay on every hearth, nothing could quite dim the gladness of London’s awakening to the Spring. “Those fellows all look so happy,” said Mr. Linton, indicating a motor-car crammed with wounded men in their blue hospital suits and scarlet ties. “One never sees a discontented face among them. I hope our boys will look as happy, Norah.” “If there is any chance of looking happy, Jim and Wally will take it!” said Norah, firmly. “I think they will,” said her father, laughing. “The difficulty is to imagine them ill.” “Yes, isn’t it? Do you remember when those horrid Zulus battered them about so badly in Durban, how extraordinary it was to see them both in bed, looking pale?” “Well, I think it was the first time it had occurred to either of them,” said Mr. Linton. “I suppose one could never realize the awful effects of the gas unless one actually saw it,” Norah said. “But I can’t help feeling glad, if they had to be hurt, that it was that: not wounds or—crippling.” Her voice fell on the last word. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of Jim or Wally being crippled.” “Don’t!” said her father, sharply. “Please God, they’ll come out of it without that. And as for the gas—Jim assured us they would be all right, but I’ll be glad when I talk to a doctor about them myself.”