Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/214

 206  If they do you can stretch out and pretend to be wounded. This is one way in which you can be very useful—being wounded."

He took all his tea at a gulp, and then looked round in an almost distracted manner.

"Certainly," he said. "Of course. It's all perfectly simple. You—you don't mind, I suppose, if I take a moment to arrange my mind? It seems to be all mussed up. Apparently I think clearly, but somehow or other"

"We are actuated by several motives," Tish went on, beginning to turn the heel of the sock. "First of all, my nephew is at the Front. I want to be near him. I am a childless woman, and he is all I have. Second, I fancy the more cigarettes and so on our boys have the better for them, though I disapprove of cigarettes generally. And finally, I do not intend to let the biggest thing in my lifetime go by without having been a part of it, even in the most humble manner."

"Entirely reasonable too," he said.

But he still had a strange expression on his face, and soon after that he said he'd walk round a little in the air and then come back and tell us his decision.

At five o'clock he was back and he was very pale and wore what Aggie considered a haunted