Sometimes they went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness.

Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in the warmth.
Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis.

The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason for his mother's difference in feeling for him.

One day he came home at dinner-time feeling ill.

But it was not a family to make any fuss.
"What's the matter with YOU ?" his mother asked sharply.
"Nothing," he replied.
But he ate no dinner.
"If you eat no dinner, you're not going to school," she said.
"Why ?" he asked.
"That's why." So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved.