" (See
Lauder03.jpg)]
Soon after we received that letter there came what we could not but
think great news. John was ordered home! He was invalided, to be
sure, and I warned his mother that she must be prepared for a shock
when she saw him. But no matter how ill he was, we would have our lad
with us for a space. And for that much British fathers and mothers
had learned to be grateful.
I had warned John's mother, but it was I who was shocked when I saw
him first on the day he came back to our wee hoose at Dunoon. His
cheeks were sunken, his eyes very bright, as a man's are who has a
fever. He was weak and thin, and there was no blood in his cheeks. It
was a sight to wring one's heart to see the laddie so brought down--
him who had looked so braw and strong the last time we had seen him.
That had been when he was setting out for the wars, you ken! And now
he was back, sae thin and weak and pitiful as I had not seen him
since he had been a bairn in his mother's arms.
Aweel, it was for us, his mother and I, and all the folks at home, to
mend him, and make him strong again. So he told us, for he had but
one thing on his mind--to get back to his men.
"They'll be needing me, out there," he said. "They're needing men. I
must go back so soon as I can. Every man is needed there."
"You'll be needing your strength back before you can be going back,
son," I told him. "If you fash and fret it will take you but so much
the longer to get back.
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