Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/108

Professor had some meeting, so Alison and Tony sat awaiting his return in the library, and talked of the past and the future with long silences in between. Alison realised keenly just how much she was going to miss this boy she had learnt to love so quickly and so dearly—just how lonely the house would be with no boy running up and down stairs, coming in to report himself two or three times a day, sitting in his corner in the evenings with twinkling, appreciative eyes as she remonstrated with her husband on the error of his clothes, or was teased by him till she had to appeal for justice to be done. Besides, he was still so young to be going off into the world like that. Suppose he was ill, with only strangers to nurse him—perhaps no one at all———!

“Oh, Tony dear, you will take care of yourself, won’t you? You won’t go and do all sorts of dangerous, reckless things?—you will be careful?”

“I’m not reckless,” Tony assured her. “I shall be all right, you’ll see.”

“And you will write, Little Boy?—not only sometimes, but quite regularly, quite often?”

“Yes, I’ll write, of course. And you will write to me?”

“Always. But I want you to promise me this—that you’ll write to me very fully, Tony. Of course, I know there will be some things you won’t want—you couldn’t write about—but as a rule, I want you to tell me things that you wouldn’t otherwise have written so fully about. I shall feel so much more satisfied if I know you are telling me just everything you can. Will you promise me this, Tony?”

“Yes,” Tony said, after a minute’s thought; “I promise you that.”

“I shall be thinking of you every day. You’ll never forget me, will you, dear?”

“No; I can promise you that too. I don’t suppose—”