"I didn't know how to face you," he said. Norah had gone to meet him,
and they were walking back from the station.

"Don't, Wally; you hurt," she said.

"It's true, though; I didn't. I feel as if you must hate me for
coming back--alone."

"Hate you!--and you were Jim's chum!"

"I always came as Jim's chum," Wally said heavily. "From the very
first, when I was a lonely little nipper at school, I sort of belonged
to Jim. And now--well, I just can't realize it, Norah. I can't keep
on thinking about him as dead. I know he is, and one minute I'm
feeling half-insane about it, and the next I forget, and think I hear
him whistling or calling me." He clenched his hands. "It's the
minute after that that is the worst of all," he said.

For a time they did not speak. They walked on slowly, along the
pleasant country lane with its blossoming hedges.

"I know," Norah said. "There's not much to choose between you and Dad
and me, when it comes to missing Jim. But as for you--well you did
come as Jim's chum first--and always; but you came just as much
because you were yourself. You know you belonged to Billabong, as we
all did. You can't cut yourself off from us now, Wally."

"I?" he echoed. "Well, if I do, I have mighty little left. But I
felt that you couldn't want to see me. I know what it must be like to
see me come back without him."

"I'm not going to say it doesn't hurt," said Norah. "Only it hurts
you as much as it does us. And the thing that would be ever so much
worse is for you not to come. Why, you're the only comfort we have
left. Don't you see, you're like a bit of Jim coming back to us?"

"Oh, Norah--Norah!" he said. "If I could only have saved him!"

"Don't we know you'd have died quite happily if you could!" Norah
said. "Just as happily as he would have died for you."

"He did, you know," Wally said. All the youth and joy had gone out of
his voice, leaving it flat and toneless. "Two or three times that
morning he kept me out of a specially hot spot, and took it himself.
He was always doing it: we nearly punched each other's heads about it
the day before--I told him he was using his rank unfairly. He just
grinned and said subalterns couldn't understand necessary strategy in
the field!"

"He would!" said Norah, laughing.

Wally stared at her.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you laugh again!"

"Not laugh!" Norah echoed. "Why, it wouldn't be fair to Jim if we
didn't. We keep him a