"
"No, but you've sense, old chap. You'd be the first to say one of us
couldn't go out without proper food. Try, won't you?"
"I'll try," Norah said, obediently.
"Brownie's got dinner for Wally and me in the breakfast-room," Jim
said. "Wouldn't you come down, old girl? It's only old Wal., you know,
and--and he's so awfully sorry for you, Nor. He's been such a brick. I
think it would cheer him up a bit if you came down."
"All right," Norah said, hesitating a moment. "But I'm bad company,
Jim."
"We're none of us lively," said the boy. "But we've got to help each
other." And Norah looked at him gently, and came.
Dinner was quiet, for the shadow hung upon them all. Wally tried to
talk cheerfully, checked by a lump that would rise in his throat
whenever he looked at Norah, who was "playing the game" manfully,
trying hard to eat and to be, as she would have said, "ordinary." They
talked of the plans for the next day, when a systematic search was to
be made through the scrub near where the tracks had been found.
"Each of us is to take a revolver," Jim said; "there are five
altogether, and the men who haven't got them will have to use their
stockwhips as signals if they find anything. Three shots to be fired in
the air if help is wanted. And Brownie has flasks ready for every one,
and little packets of food with some chocolate; if he's come to grief
it'll be nearly forty-eight hours since he had anything to eat.
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