a kind of acid test that
generally brings out the best--and worst--of travellers. There was
something protective in Norah's nature that responded instantly to the
lonely position of the girl who was going across the world to a strange
country. Both were motherless, but in Norah's case the blank was
softened by a father who had striven throughout his children's lives to
be father and mother alike to them, while Cecilia had only the bitter
memory of the man who had shirked his duty until he had become less than
a stranger to her. If any pang smote her heart at the sight of Norah's
worshipping love for the tall grey "dad" for whom she was the very
centre of existence, Cecilia did not show it. The Lintons had taken them
into their little circle at once--more, perhaps, by reason of Cecilia's
extraordinary introduction to them than through General Harran's
letter--and Bob and his sister were already grateful for their
friendship. They were a quiet quartet, devoted to each other in their
undemonstrative fashion; Norah was on a kind of boyish footing with Jim,
the huge silent brother who was a major, with three medal ribbons to
his credit, and with Wally Meadows, his inseparable chum, who had been
almost brought up with the brother and sister.

"They were always such bricks to me, even when I was a little scrap of a
thing," she had told Cecilia. "They never said I was 'only a girl,' and
kept me out of things. So I grew up more than three parts a boy. It was
so much easier for dad to manage three boys, you see!"

"You don't look much like a boy," Cecilia had said, looking at the tall,
slender figure and the mass of curly brown hair. They were getting ready
for bed, and Norah was wielding a hair-brush vigorously.

"No, but I really believe I feel like one--at least, I do whenever I
am with Jim and Wally," Norah had answered. "And when we get back
to Billabong it will be just as it always was--we'll be three boys
together. You know, it's the most ridiculous thing to think of Jim and
Wally as grown-ups. Dad and I can't get accustomed to it at all. And as
for Jim being a major!--a major sounds so dignified and respectable, and
Jim isn't a bit like that!"

"And what about Captain Meadows?"

"Oh--Wally will simply never grow up." Norah laughed softly. "He's like
Peter Pan. Once he nearly managed it--in that bad time when Jim was a
prisoner, and we thought he was killed. But Jim got back just in time to
save him from anything so