Then he remembered Esther, too, was, looking unwell; the nursing and the General together had been too much for her, and she looked quite a shadow of her bright self.

He knew he really ought to send her, too, and the child, of course.
And again the expense.
He remembered the Christmas holidays were not very far away; what would become of the house with Pip and Bunty and the two youngest girls running wild, and no one in authority?
He sighed heavily, and knocked the ash from his fourth cigar upon the carpet.
Then the postman came along the drive and past the window.

He poked up with a broad smile, and touched his helmet in a pleased kind of way.

If almost seemed as if he knew that in one of the letters he held the solution of the problem that was making the Captain's brow all criss-crossed with frowning lines.
A fifth cigar was being extracted from the case, a wrinkle was deepening just over the left eyebrow, a twinge of something very like gout was calling forth a word or two of "foreign language," when Esther came in with a smile on her lips and an open letter in her hands.
"From Mother," she said.

"Yarrahappini's a wilderness, it seems, and she wants me to go up, and take the General with me, for a few weeks." "Ah!" he said.
It would certainly solve one of the difficulties.