For once the common was almost deserted; but far away in front of the "Shop" a thin line of khaki proclaimed the fact that some of the cadets were drilling.

Ger loved the Shop. He had been there on several occasions, accompanied by one or other of his grandparents, to see Grantly, and he knew that he must not go in alone, or his brother would, as he put it, "get in a bate." But there could be no objection to his standing at the gate and looking in at the parade ground. He knew the porter, a nice friendly chap who would not drive him away.

He turned off the common into the road that runs up past the Cadet Hospital. He knew the Cadet Hospital, for once he had gone there with Grannie to visit "a kind of cousin" who had broken his collar-bone in the riding-school. As he passed Ger looked in at the open door. A little crowd of rather poor-looking people stood in the entrance, among them a boy about his own age, with a great pad of cotton-wool fastened over his ear by a bandage.

A crowd of any sort had always an irresistible fascination for Ger. He skipped up the path and pushed in among the waiting people to the side of the boy with the tied-up head.

"Got a sore ear?" he murmured sympathetically.

"Wot's it to you wot I got?" was the discouraging reply.

"Well, I'm sorry, you know," said Ger with obvious sincerity.

The boy looked hard at him and grunted.

"What are you here for?" Ger whispered.

"The Myjor, 'e got to syringe it," the boy mumbled, but this time his tone was void of offence.

"Does it hurt?"

"'E don't 'urt, not much, 'e is careful; 'e's downright afraid of urtin' ya'. . . . An' if 'e does 'urt, it's becos 'e can't 'elp it, an' so," here he wagged his head impressively, "ya' just doesn't let on . . . see? Wots the matter wiv you?"

Here was a poser. Yet Ger was consumed by a desire to see this mysterious "myjor" who syringed ears and didn't hurt people. He had fallen upon an adventure, and he was going to see it out.

"I don't know exactly," he whispered mysteriously, "but I've got to see him."

"P'raps they've wrote about ya'," the bandaged boy suggested.

Ger thought this was unlikely, but let the suggestion pass unchallenged. He watched the various people vanish into a room on the right, saw them come out again, heard the invariable "Next please" which heralded the seclusion of a new patient, till everybody had gone and come back and gone forth into the street again save only the bandaged boy and himself.

"You nip in w'en I comes out," the boy said encouragingly, "it's a bit lyte already, but 'e'll see ya' if yer slippy."

It seemed a long time to Ger as he waited. The little crowd of women and children had melted away. Men in blue cotton jackets passed to and fro across the hall, "Sister," in a curious headdress and scarlet cape, looking like a picture by Carpaccio, came out of another room, went up the staircase and vanished from view. No one spoke to him or asked his business, and Ger stood in a dark corner holding his cap in his hands and waiting.

At last the boy came back with a clean bandage and a big new pad of cotton-wool over the syringed ear.

"'Urry up," he whispered as he passed. "I told 'im as there was one more."

Ger hurried.

Once inside that mysterious door he started violently, for a tall figure clad in a long white smock was standing near a sink brushing his nails. He wore a black band round his head, and on his forehead, attached to the band, was a round mirror. The very brightest mirror Ger had ever seen.

So this was the Myjor.

The uniform was quite new to Ger.

The eyes under the mirror were very blue, and for the rest this strangely clad tall man had a brown moustache and a pleasant voice as he turned, and drying his hands the while, said:

"Well, young shaver, what's the matter with you?"

In his eight years Ger had had but few aches and pains save such as followed naturally upon falls or fights, but he knew that if this interview was to be prolonged he must have something, so he hazarded an ailment.

"I've a muzzy feeling in my head sometimes, sir, a sort of ache, not bad, you know."

The Myjor looked very hard at Ger as he spoke—evidently the little boy's voice and accent were in some way unexpected.

He sat down and drew him forward close to his knees. The round mirror on his forehead flashed into Ger's eyes and he winced.

"Headache, eh?" said the Myjor cheerfully. "You don't look as though you ought to get headaches. Can you read?"

"No, sir, that's just what I can't do, and there's awful rows about it. I can't seem to read, I don't want to much, but I do try . . . I do really, but it's so muddly."

"How long have you been learning?"

"Years and years," said Ger mournfully. "They say Kitten 'll read before me, and she's only four."

"Um," said the Myjor, "that will never do. We can't have Kitten stealing a march on us that way. This must be seen into. By the way, what's your name?"

"Gervais Folaire Ffolliot," Ger answered solemnly, as though he were saying his catechism.

"Ffolliot . . . Ffolliot . . . where d'you live?"

"Redmarley . . . it's a long way from here."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"I'm stopping with grannie and grandfather."

"And who is grandfather?"

"General Grantly," Ger answered promptly, smiling broadly. He always felt that his grandfather was a trump card anywhere, but in Woolwich most of all, "and he's got such a lot of medals, teeny ones, you know, like the big ones. I can read them," he added proudly. "I know them all. Grannie taught me."

"But why have you come to me? And why on earth do you come in among the wives and children of the Shop servants?"

"The door was open," Ger explained, "and I talked to the ear boy, and he said you were most awfully gentle and didn't hurt and hated if you had to—so I knew you were kind, and I'm awfully fond of kind people, so I wanted to see you—you're not cross, are you?" he asked anxiously.

"Um," again remarked the Myjor, and stared at Ger thoughtfully. "Well," he said at last, "since you are here, what is it you find so hard about reading?"

"It's so muddly," Ger complained, "nasty little letters and all so much alike."

"Exactly so," said the Myjor.

Then he drew down the blinds.

Ger's heart beat fast. Here was an adventure indeed, and when you were once well in for an adventure all sorts of queer things happened.

Unprecedented things happened to Ger, but he was never very clear afterwards as to what they were. So many things were "done to him" that he became quite confused. Lights flashed into eyes, lights so brilliant that they quite hurt. Curious spectacles with heavy frames and glasses that took in and out were placed upon his nose, and he was only allowed to use one eye at a time, the other being blotted out by a black disk in the spectacles. At last he looked through with both eyes together at letters on a card, letters that were blacker and clearer than any he had ever seen before . . . and the blinds were drawn up.

"Will you please tell me," Ger asked politely, "what is that curious uniform you wear? I don't seem to have seen it before, an' I've seen a great many."

The Myjor laughed. "It's my working kit; don't you like it?"

"Very much," said Ger, "I think you look like an angel."

"Really," said the Myjor. "I haven't met any, so I don't know."

"I haven't exactly met any," said Ger, "but I've seen portraits of two, and . . . I know a lot about them."

"Now, young man, you listen to me," said the Ram-Corps Angel. "Eyes are not my job really, but I'm glad you looked in to see me, for I'll send you to someone who'll put you right and you'll read long before the Kitten. She'll never catch you. Right away you'll go, she won't be in the same field. You'd better go back now, or Mrs Grantly will be wondering where you are—cheer up about that reading."

"Will I?" Ger asked breathlessly. "Shall I be able to get into the Shop? They pill you for eyes, you know."

"Your eyes will be all right by the time you're ready for the Shop. You see crooked just now, you know—and it wants correcting, that's all."

"What?" cried Ger despairingly. "Do I squint?"

"Bless you, no; the sight of your two eyes is different, that's all—when you get proper glasses you'll be right as rain. Lots of people have it . . . if you'd been a Board School you'd have been seen to long ago," he added, more to himself than to Ger.

Then Ger shook hands with the Ram-Corps Angel and walked rather slowly and thoughtfully across the common to grandfather's house though the wind was colder than ever. He forgot to look in at the Shop gate, but the parade ground was empty. The cadets had finished drilling. Ger had been so long in that darkened room.

He had lunch alone with his grannie, for grandfather was lunching at his club. There was no poking of the Ffolliot children into schoolrooms and nurseries for meals when they stayed with the ganpies. His face was clean and his hair very smooth, and he held back Mrs Granny's chair for her just as grandfather did. She stooped and kissed the fresh, friendly little face and told him he was a dear, which was most pleasant.

He was hungry and the roast mutton was very good, moreover he was going to the Zoo that afternoon directly after lunch, grannie's French maid was to take him. They were to have a taxi from Charing Cross, and lunch passed pleasantly, enlivened by the discussion of this enchanting plan.

Presently he asked, apropos of nothing: "Do all the Ram-Corps officers look like angels?"

"Like angels!" Mrs Grantly repeated derisively. "Good gracious, no! Very plain indeed, some of them I've seen."

"The one at the Cadet Hospital does," Ger said positively, "like a great big angel and a dear."

"Who? Major Murray?" Mrs Grantly inquired, looking puzzled; "where have you seen him?"

But at this very moment someone came to tell Ger it was time to get ready, and in the fuss and excitement of seeing him off, his grannie forgot all about the Ram Corps and its angelic attributes.

It was her day. Guest after guest arrived, and she was pretty tired by the time she had given tea to some five and twenty people.

The General never came in at all till the last guest had gone. Then he sought his wife, and standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire he told her that Major Murray had been to see him, and had recounted Ger's visit of the morning, and the result of his investigations.

Mrs Grantly, which was unusual, never interrupted once.

"So you can understand," the General concluded, "I didn't feel like facing a lot of people."

"I shall write at once to Margie," Mrs Grantly cried breathlessly, "and tell her she is a fool."

"I wouldn't do that," the General said gently; "poor Margie, she has a good deal on her shoulders."

"All the same—do you remember that that unfortunate child has been punished—punished because he was considered idle and obstinate over his lessons . . . punished . . . little Ger—friendly, jolly little Ger . . . I can't bear it," and Mrs Grantly burst into tears.

The General looked very much as though he would like to cry too. "It's an unfortunate business," he said huskily, "but you see, none of us have ever had any eye trouble, and the other children have all such good sight . . . it never occurred to me . . . I must confess . . . of course it can be put right very easily; you're to take him to the oculist to-morrow; I've telephoned and made the appointment."

Mrs Grantly dried her eyes.

"We're all to blame," she exclaimed, "I'm just as much to blame as Margie . . . she'll be fearfully upset I don't know how to tell her."

"Tell you what," exclaimed the General, "I'll write to Ffolliot . . . I'll do it now, this instant, and the letter will catch the 7.30 post . . ."

At the door he paused and added more cheerfully, "I shall enjoy writing to Ffolliot."



CHAPTER XVIII

WHAT FOLLOWED

As General Grantly had predicted, Mrs Ffolliot was very much upset when she heard about Ger's eyes, and was for rushing up to London herself, there and then to interview the oculist. But Mr Ffolliot dissuaded her. For one thing, he hated Redmarley without her even for a single night. For another, he considered such a journey a needless expense. This, however, he did not mention, but contented himself with the suggestion that it would seem a reflection upon Mrs Grantly's competence to do anything of the kind; and that consideration weighed heavily with his wife where the other would have been brushed aside as immaterial and irrelevant. "I can't understand it," the Squire remarked plaintively; "I did not know there had ever been any eye trouble in your family."

"There never has, so far as I know; but surely," and Mrs Ffolliot spoke with something less than her usual gentle deference, "we needn't seek far to find where Ger gets his."

"Do you mean that he inherits it from ME?"

"Well, my dear Larrie, surely you've got defective sight, else why the monocle?"

"But Ger isn't a bit like me. He is all Grantly. In character, I sometimes think he resembles your mother, he is so fond of society; in appearance he's very like the others, except the Kitten. Now, if the Kitten's sight had been astigmatic . . ."

"We must take care that she doesn't suffer from neglect like poor little Ger," Mrs Ffolliot interrupted rather bitterly. "I shall write at once to their house-master to have the twins' eyes tested. I'll run no more risks. We know Grantly's all right because he passed his medical so easily. Poor, poor little Ger."

"It certainly is most unfortunate," said Mr Ffolliot.

He was really concerned about Ger, but mingled with his concern was the feeling that the little boy had taken something of a liberty in developing that particular form of eye trouble. It seemed an unfilial reflection upon himself. Moreover, there was something in the General's letter plainly stating the bare facts that he did not exactly like. It was, he considered, "rather brusque." He started for the South, of France four days earlier than he had originally intended.

Ger was taken to the great oculist in London, who confirmed the "Myjor's" diagnosis of his case, and he was forthwith put into large round spectacles. When he got them, his appearance brought the tears to his grandmother's eyes—tears she rigidly repressed, for Ger was so enormously proud of them. The first afternoon he wore them he went with his grandfather to see Grantly playing in a football match at the Shop, and among those watching on the field he espied his friend "the Ram-Corps Angel." Ger knew him at once, although he wore no white garment, not even khaki, just a plain tweed suit like his grandfather's.

While the General was deep in conversation with the "Commy," Ger slipped away and sought his friend.

"Hullo," said the 'Myjor,' "so you've got 'em on."

"Yes, sir," said Ger, saluting solemnly, "and I'm very much obliged. It's lovely to see things so nice and clear. Please may I ask you something?"

The Major stepped back out of the crowd and Ger slipped a small hand confidingly into his. Ger had not been to school yet, so there were excuses for him.

"Do you think," he asked earnestly, "that if I'm very industr'us and don't turn out quite so stupid as they expected, that by-and-by I might get into the Ram Corps?"

Major Murray looked down very kindly at the anxious upturned face with the large round spectacles.

"But I thought the Shop was the goal of your ambition?"

"So it was, sir, at first. Then I gave it up because it seemed so difficult, and I talked it over with Willets, and he said he'd never had a great deal of book-learnin'—though he writes a beautiful hand, far better than father—and then I thought I'd be a gamekeeper."

"And what did Willets think?"

"Well, he didn't seem to be very sure—and now I come to think of it, I'm not very fond of killing things . . . so if there was just a chance . . ."

"I'd go into the Ram Corps if I were you," said Major Murray; "by the time you're ready, gamekeepers—if there are any—will have to pass exams, like all the other poor beggars. You bet your boots on that. Some Board of Forestry or other will start 'em, you see if they don't."

"Oh, well, if there's to be exams, that settles it. I certainly shan't be one," Ger said decidedly; "I've been thinking it over a lot——"

"Oh, you have, have you?"

"An' it seems to me . . ."

"Yes, it seems to you?"

"That pr'aps you get to know people better if you mend all their accidents and things. I'm awfully fond of people, they're so intrusting, I'd rather know about them than anything."

"What sort of people?"

"The men you know, and their wives and children; they're awfully nice, the ones I know—and if you see after them when they're ill and that, they're bound to be a bit fond of you, aren't they?"

Major Murray gave the cold little hand in his a squeeze. "It seems to me," he said, "that you're just the sort of chap we want. You stick to it."

"Is it very hard to get in?"

"Well, it isn't exactly easy, but it's dogged as does it, and if you start now—why, you've plenty of time."

"That's settled then," said Ger, "and when you're Medical Inspector-General or some big brass hat like the fat old gentleman who came to see Ganpy yesterday—you'll say a good word for me, won't you?"

"I will," Major Murray promised, "I most certainly will."

"You see," Ger continued, beaming through his spectacles, "if there's war I should be bound to go, they can't get on without the Ram Corps then, and I'd be doing things for people all day long. Oh, it would be grand."

"It strikes me," said Major Murray, more to himself than to Ger, "that you stand a fair chance of getting your heart's desire—more than most people."

"I'm very partikler about my nails now," said Ger. "I saw you scrubbing yours that day at the Cadet Hospital."

When he got home Mrs Ffolliot retired to her room and cried long and heartily, but Ger never knew it. His spectacles to him were a joy and a glory, and he confided to the Kitten that his guardian angel, Sergeant-Major Spinks, did sentry beside them every night so that they shouldn't get lost or broken.

"My angel's in prizzen," the Kitten announced dramatically.

"In prison!" exclaimed Ger, "whatever for?"

"For shooting turkeys," the Kitten replied, "an' he's all over chicken-spots."

"Why did he shoot turkeys for?"

"'Cause he wanted more feathers for his wings."

"But that wouldn't give him chicken-spots."

"No, that didn't—he got them at a pahty, like you did last Christmas."

"Poor chap," said Ger, "but I can't see why he stays in prison when he could fly away."

"They clipped his wings," the Kitten said importantly, "an' I'm glad; he can't come and bother me no more now."

"I hope Spinks won't go shooting fowls and things in his off-time," Ger said anxiously. "I must warn him."

"Pheasants wouldn't matter so much," the Kitten said leniently, "I asked Willets; but turkeys is orful."

"Not at all sporting to shoot turkeys," Ger agreed, "though they are so cross and gobbly."

In the middle of February Mrs Ffolliot fell a victim to influenza, and she was really very ill.

At first she would not allow anyone to tell her husband about it, but when she became too weak to write herself, Mary took it upon her to inform her father of her mother's state. The doctor insisted on sending a nurse, as three of the servants had also collapsed, and Mrs Grantly came down from Woolwich to see to things generally; though when she came, she acknowledged that Mary had done everything that could be done.

Mr Ffolliot curtailed his holiday by a week, and returned at the end of February, to find his wife convalescent, but thin and pale and weak as he had never before seen her during their married life.

He decided that he would take her for a fortnight to Bournemouth.

But Mrs Grantly had other views.

She, Mary, and Mr Ffolliot were sitting at breakfast the day after his return, when he suggested the Bournemouth plan with what Willets would have called his most "Emp'rish air."

Mrs Grantly looked across at Mary and the light of battle burned in her bright brown eyes.

"I don't think Bournemouth would be one bit of good for Margie," she said briskly, "you can't be sure of sunshine—it may be mild, but it's morally certain to rain half the time, and Margie needs cheerful surroundings—sunshine—and the doctor says . . . a complete change of scene and people."

"Where would you propose that I should take her?" Mr Ffolliot asked, fixing his monocle and staring steadily at his mother-in-law.

"To tell you the truth, Hilary, I don't propose that you should take her anywhere. What I propose is that her father and I should take her to Cannes with us a week to-day."

"To Cannes," Mr Ffolliot gasped, "in a week. I don't believe she could stand the journey."

"Oh yes, she could. Her father will see that she does it as comfortably as possible, and I shall take Adele, who can look after both of us. We'll stay a night in Paris, and at Avignon if Margie shows signs of being very tired. You must understand that Margie will go as our guest."

Mr Ffolliot dropped his monocle and leant back in his chair. "It is most kind of you and the General," he said politely, "but I doubt very much if she can be persuaded to go."

"Oh she's going," Mrs Grantly said easily, while Mary, with scarlet cheeks, looked at her plate, knowing well that the subject had never been so much as touched upon to her mother. "You see, Hilary, she has had a good deal of Redmarley, and the children and you, during the last twenty years, and it will do her all the good in the world to get away from you all for a bit. Don't you agree with me, Mary?"

Mary lifted her downcast eyes and looked straight at her father. "The doctor says it's mother's only chance of getting really strong," she said boldly, "to get right away from all of us."

"You, my dear Hilary," Mrs Grantly continued in the honeyed tones her family had long ago learnt to recognise as the precursor of verbal castigation for somebody, "would not be the agreeable and well-informed person you are, did you not go away by yourself for a fairly long time during every year. I don't think you have missed once since Grantly was born. How often has Margie been away by herself, even for a couple of nights?"

"Margie has never expressed the slightest wish to go away," Mr Ffolliot said reproachfully. "I have often deplored her extreme devotion to her children."

"Somebody had to be devoted to her children," said Mrs Grantly.

Mr Ffolliot ignored this thrust, saying haughtily, "Since I understand that this has all been settled without consulting me, I cannot see that any good purpose can be served in further discussion of the arrangement now," and he rose preparatory to departure.

"Wait, Hilary," Mrs Grantly rose too. "I don't think you quite understand that the smallest objection on your part to Margie would at once render the whole project hopeless. What you've got to do is to smile broadly upon the scheme——"

Here Mary gasped, the "broad smile" of the Squire upon anything or anybody being beyond her powers of imagination.

"Otherwise," Mrs Grantly paused to frown at Mary, who softly vanished from the room, "you may have Margie on your hands as an invalid for several months, and I don't think you'd like that."

"But who," Mr Ffolliot demanded, "will look after things while she's away?"

"Why you and Mary, to be sure. My dear Hilary," Mrs Grantly said sweetly, "a change is good for all of us, and it will be wholesome for you to take the reins into your own hands for a bit. I confess I've often wondered how you could so meekly surrender the whole management of this big place to Margie. It's time you asserted yourself a little."

Mr Ffolliot stared gloomily at Mrs Grantly, who smiled at him in the friendliest fashion. "You see," she went on, "you are, if I may say so, a little unobservant, or you would perhaps have personally investigated what made Ger, an otherwise quite normally intelligent child, so very stupid over his poor little lessons."

"I've always left everything of that sort to his mother."

"I know you have—but do you think it was quite fair? And for a long time Margie has been looking thin and fagged. Her father was most concerned about it at Christmas—but I never heard you remark upon it."

"She never complains," Mr Ffolliot said feebly.

"Complains," Mrs Grantly repeated scornfully. "We're not a complaining family. But I should have thought you with your strong love of the beautiful would at least have remarked how she has gone off in looks."

"She hasn't," said Mr Ffolliot with some heat.

"She looks her age, every day of it," Mrs Grantly persisted. "When we bring her back she'll look like Mary's sister!"

"How long do you propose to be away?"

"Oh, three weeks or a month; at the most a fortnight less than you have had every year for nineteen years."

Mr Ffolliot made no answer; he took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette with hands that were not quite steady.

"You quite understand then, Hilary, that you are to put the whole weight of your authority into the scale that holds France for Margie?"

"I thought you said it was settled?"

"My dear man, you know what a goose she is; if she thought you hated it, nothing would induce her to go—you must consider her for once."

"I really must protest," Mr Ffolliot said stiffly, "against your gratuitous assumption that I care nothing for Margie's welfare."

"Not at all," Mrs Grantly said smoothly, "I only ask for a modest manifestation of your devotion, that's all."

"Shall I go to her now?" said Mr Ffolliot with the air of a lamb led to the slaughter.

"Certainly not—she'll probably be trying to get up lest you should want her for anything. I'll go and keep her in bed till luncheon. You may come and see her at eleven."

When Fusby came in for the breakfast tray, Mr Ffolliot was still standing on the hearth-rug immersed in thought.



CHAPTER XIX

MARY AND HER FATHER

In the lives of even the strongest and most competent among us, there will arise moments when decision of any kind has become impossible, and it is a real relief to have those about us who settle everything without asking whether we like it or not. Such times are almost always the result of physical debility, when the enfeebled body so reacts upon brain and spirit that no matter how vigorous the one or valorous the other, both seem atrophied.

It is at such times that we have cause to bless the doctor who is a strong man, and fears not to give orders or talk straight talk; and the relations who never so much as mention any plan till it has been decided, taking for granted we will approve the arrangements they have made.

We are generally acquiescent, for it is so blessed to drift passively in the wake of these determined ones, till such time as, with returning physical strength, the will asserts itself once more.

Thus it fell out that Mrs Ffolliot was surprisingly submissive when she was told by the doctor, a plain-spoken country doctor, who did not mince his words, that she must seize the chance offered of going to the South of France with her parents, or he wouldn't answer for the consequences.

"You are," he said, "looking yellow and dowdy, and you are feeling blue and hysterical; if you don't go away at once you'll go on doing both for an interminable time."

Mrs Ffolliot laughed. "Then I suppose for the sake of the rest of the family I ought to go"—and she went.

If Mr Ffolliot did not take Mrs Grantly's advice and look after things himself, he certainly was forced to attend to a good many tiresome details in the management of things outside the Manor House than had ever fallen to his lot before. Mary saved him all she could, but Willets and Heaven and Fusby seemed to take a malicious delight in consulting him about trivial things that he found himself quite unable to decide one way or other.

At first he tried to put them off with "Ask Miss Mary," but Willets shook his head, smiled kindly, and said firmly, "Twouldn't be fair, sir, 'twouldn't really."

Ger and the Kitten had never seemed so tiresome and ubiquitous before, coming across his path at every turn; and Ger certainly nullified any uneasiness on the Squire's part regarding his eyes by practising, in and out of season, upon a discarded bugle. A bugle bought for him by one of his friends in the Royal 'Orse for the sum of three and ninepence. Ger had amassed three shillings of this sum, and the good-natured gunner never mentioned the extra ninepence.

Ger had a quick ear and could already pick out little tunes on the piano with one finger, though, so far, he had found musical notation as difficult as every other kind of reading.

But he took to the bugle like a duck to water, and on an evil day someone in Woolwich had taught him the peace call, "Come to the Cookhouse Door."

The inhabitants of Redmarley were summoned to the cook-house door from every part of the village, from the woods, from the riverside, and from the churchyard.

He played the bugle in the nursery and in the stableyard, he played it in the attics and outside the servants' hall when the servants' dinner was ready.

He was implored, threatened and punished, but all without avail, for Ger had tasted the joys of achievement. He had found what superior persons call "the expression of his essential ego," and just then his cosmos was all bugle.

Not even his good-natured desire to oblige people was proof against this overwhelming desire to call imaginary troops to feed together on every possible and impossible occasion. He did try to keep a good way from the house, or to choose moments in the house when he knew his father was out, but he made mistakes. He could not discover by applying his eye to the keyhole of the study door whether his father was in the room or not, and, as he remarked bitterly, "Father always sat so beastly still" it was impossible to hear.

He looked upon the Squire's objections as a cross, but the dread of his father's anger was nothing like so strong as his desire to play the bugle, and even the Squire perceived that short of taking the bugle away from him, which would have broken his heart, there was nothing for it but to frown and bear it—in moderation.

Mrs Grantly's very direct assault had made a small breach in the wall of Mr Ffolliot's complacency; and a fairly vivid recollection of the shilling episode inclined him to deal leniently with Ger while his mother was away. He rang the bell furiously for Fusby whenever the most distant strains of "Come to the Cook-house Door" smote upon his ears, and sent him post haste to stop that "infernal braying and bleating"; but beyond such unwelcome interruptions Ger tootled in peace.

Mary was lonely and the days seemed long; she saw no one but her father, the servants, the two children and Miss Glover, the meek little governess, who seemed to spend most of her time in hunting for Ger among outhouses and gardens, and was scorned by Nana in consequence.

When her mother was at home Mary was accustomed to wander about Redmarley unchallenged and unaccompanied save by the faithful Parker. But Mr Ffolliot took his duties as chaperon most seriously and expected that Mary should never stir beyond the gardens unless accompanied by Miss Glover. He even seemed suspicious as to her most innocent expeditions, and every morning at breakfast demanded a minute time-table planning her day.

Mary didn't mind this. It was easy enough to say that after she had interviewed the cook (there was no housekeeper now at Redmarley) she would practise, or read French with Miss Glover; or go into Marlehouse accompanied by Miss Glover for a music lesson; or drive with Miss Glover and the children to Marlehouse to do the weekly shopping; or go with Miss Glover to the tailor to be fitted for a coat and skirt. All that was easy enough to reel off in answer to the Squire's inquiries. It was the afternoons that were difficult. She had been used to go into the village and visit her friends, Willets, Miss Gallup, the laundry-maid's mother, everybody there in fact, and now this seemed to be forbidden her unless Miss Glover went too, which spoiled everything.

Sometimes she walked with the Squire and tried to feel an intelligent interest in Ercole Ferrarese, whose work Mr Ffolliot greatly admired. In fact he was just then engaged on a somewhat lengthy monograph concerning both the man and his work.

Mary, in the hope of making herself a more congenial companion to her father, even went as far as to look up "Ercole" in Vasari's Lives. But Vasari was not particularly copious in details as to Ercole Ferrarese, and the particulars he did give which impressed Mary were just those most calculated to annoy her father. As, for instance, that "Ercole had an inordinate love of wine and was frequently intoxicated, in so much that his life was shortened by this habit."

The difficulties that may arise from such an inordinate affection had been brought home to her quite recently, and in one of their walks together after a somewhat prolonged silence she remarked to her father—

"It was a pity that poor Ercole drank so much, wasn't it?"

"Why seize upon a trifling matter of that sort when we are considering the man's work?" Mr Ffolliot asked angrily. "For heaven's sake, do not grow into one of those people who only perceive the obvious; whose only knowledge of Cromwell would be that he had a wart on his nose."

"I shouldn't say it was a very trifling matter seeing it killed him—drink I mean, not Cromwell's wart," Mary responded with more spirit than usual. "Vasari says so."

"It is quite possible that he does, but it is not a salient feature."

"A wart on the nose would be a very salient feature," Mary ventured.

"Exactly, that is what you would think and that is what I complain of. It is a strain that runs through the whole of you—except perhaps the Kitten—a dreadful narrowness of vision—don't tell me your sight is good—I'm only referring to your mental outlook. It is the fatal frivolous attitude of mind that always remembers the wholly irrelevant statement that the Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, was born when his mother was fourteen."

"Was he?" Mary exclaimed with deep interest; "how very young to have a baby."

Mr Ffolliot glared at her: "and nothing else," he continued, ignoring the interruption.

"Oh, but I do remember other things about Ercole besides being a drunkard," she protested; "he hated people watching him work, I can understand that, and he was awfully kind and faithful to his master."

"All quite useless and trifling in comparison with what I, myself, have told you of his work, which you evidently don't remember. It is a man's work that matters, not little peculiarities of temperament and character."

"I think," Mary said demurely, "that little peculiarities of temperament and character matter a good deal to the people who have to live with them."

"That is possible but quite unimportant. It is a man's intellect that is immortal, not his temperament."

Again a long silence till Mary said suddenly: "Mother has never written anything or painted anything or done anything very remarkable, and yet she seems to matter a great deal to a lot of people besides us. I never go outside the gates but people stop me and ask all sorts of questions about her. Surely character can matter too?"

Mr Ffolliot's scornful expression changed. He looked at his daughter with interest. "Do you know, Mary," he said quite amiably, "that sometimes I think you can't be quite as stupid as you make yourself appear."

That was on Friday. On Saturday Mary was in dire disgrace.

Nana had taken the children to a cinematograph show in Marlehouse. Miss Glover went with them in the bucket to visit a friend there. The Squire had affixed a paper to the outside of the study door saying that he was not to be disturbed till five o'clock, and it was a lovely afternoon. The sort of afternoon when late March holds all the promise of May, when early daffodils shine splendidly in sheltered corners, and late snowdrops in a country garden look quite large and solemn. When trodden grass has a sweet sharp smell, and all sorts of pretty things peep from the crannies of old Cotswold walls: those loose grey walls that are so infinitely various, so dear and friendly in their constant beautiful surprises.

Mary saw the nursery party go, and stood and waved to them till they were out of sight, when a faint and distant summons to the cook-house door proved that Ger had begun to play the instant the bucket had turned out of the gates.

Mary called Parker and went out.

Down the drive she went, through the great gates and over the bridge to Willets' cottage. Willets was out, but Mrs Willets was delighted to see her. Mrs Willets was a kind, comfortable person, who brewed excellent home-made wines which she loved to bestow upon her friends. Mary partook of a glass of ginger wine, very strong and very gingery, and having given the latest news of the mistress (she, herself, was "our young lady" now), received in return the mournful intelligence that Miss Gallup had had a touch of bronchitis, "reely downright bad she'd bin, and now she was about but weak as a kitten, and very low in her mind; if you'd the time just to call in and see 'er, I'm sure she'd take it very kind, with your ma away, and all."

So Mary hied her to Miss Gallup at the other end of Redmarley's one long lopsided street. Her progress was a slow one, for at every cottage gate she was stopped with exclamations: "Why we thought you was lost, or gone to furrin parts with the mistress; none on us seen you since Church last Sunday."

At last she reached "Two Ways," Miss Gallup's house, and Eloquent, of all people in the world, opened the door to her.

Mary merely thought "How nice of him to come and see his aunt," and remarked aloud:

"Ah, Mr Gallup, I'm glad to see you've come to look after the invalid, I've only just heard of her illness. May I come in? Will it tire her to see me?"

And Eloquent could find no words to greet her except, "Please step this way," and he was nevertheless painfully aware that exactly so would he have addressed her half a dozen years ago had he been leading her to the haberdashery department of the Golden Anchor.

Poor Eloquent was thrown off his mental balance altogether, for to him this was no ordinary meeting.

Picture the feelings of a young man who thinks he is opening the door to the baker and finds incarnate spring upon the threshold. Spring in weather-beaten, well-cut clothes, with a sweet, friendly voice and adorable, cordial smile.

There she was, sitting opposite Miss Gallup on one slippery horsehair "easy chair," while her hostess, much beshawled, cushioned and foot-stooled, sat on the other.

"My dear," Miss Gallup said confidentially, "Em'ly-Alice has gone to the surgery for my cough mixture and some embrocation, and she takes such a time. I'm certain she's loitering and gossiping, and she knows I like my cup of tea at four, and you here, and all; if it wasn't that my leg's seem to crumble up under me I'd go and get it myself."

"Dear Miss Gallup, don't be hard on Em'ly-Alice," Mary pleaded; "it's such a lovely afternoon I don't wonder she doesn't exactly hurry. As for tea, let me get you some tea——"

"I could," Eloquent interposed hastily, "I'm sure I could," and rose somewhat vaguely to go to the kitchen.

"Let us both get it," Mary cried gaily, "we'll be twice as quick."

And before Miss Gallup could protest they had gone to the kitchen and she could hear them laughing.

Mary was thoroughly enjoying herself. For three weeks she had poured out tea for her father solemnly at five o'clock and been snubbed for her pains.

Here were two people who liked her, who were glad to see her, who thought it kind of her to come. No girl can be wholly unconscious of admiration; nor, when it is absolutely reverential, can she resent it, and Mary felt no displeasure in Eloquent's.

They could neither of them cut bread and butter. It was a plateful of queerly shaped bits that went in on the tray; but there was an egg for Miss Gallup, and the tea was excellent.

Miss Gallup began to feel more leniently disposed towards Em'ly-Alice. "She's done for me pretty well on the whole," she told Mary. "Doctor, he wanted me to have the parish nurse over to Marle Abbas, but I don't hold with those new-fangled young women."

"She's a dear," said Mary; "mother thinks all the world of her."

"May be, may be," Miss Gallup said dryly; "but when you come to my time of life you've your own opinion about draughts. And as for that constant bathin' and washin', I don't hold with it at all. A bed's a bed, I says, and not a bath, and if you're in bed you should stay there and keep warm, and not have all the clothes took off you to have your legs washed. How can your legs get dirty if you're tucked in with clean sheets, in a clean room, in a clean house. When I haves a bath I like it comfortable, once a week, at night in front of the kitchen fire, and Em'ly-Alice safe in bed. No, my dear, I don't hold with these new-fangled notions, and Nurse Jones, she worries me to death. I 'ad 'er once, and I said, never again—whiskin' in and whiskin' out, and opening windows and washin' me all over, like I 'was a baby—most uncomfortable I call it."

The clock on the mantelpiece struck five, Mary jumped up. "I must fly," she exclaimed, "it's time for father's tea; I've been enjoying myself so much I forgot all about the time."

"You see Miss Mary as far as the gates," Miss Gallup said to her nephew. "Em'ly-Alice is in, I 'eard 'er pokin' the fire the wasteful way she has."

Mary did not want Eloquent, for she greatly desired to run, but he followed with such alacrity she had not the heart to forbid him. He walked beside her, or, more truly, he trotted beside her, through the village street, for Mary went at such a pace that Eloquent was almost breathless. He found time, however, to tell her that he had paired at the House on Friday, and took the week-end just to look after Miss Gallup, who had seemed rather low-spirited since her illness. They did the distance in record time, and outside the gates they found Mr Ffolliot waiting.

"I've been to see Miss Gallup, father, she has been ill, and I looked in to inquire. . . . I don't think you know Mr Gallup."

Mr Ffolliot bowed to Eloquent with a frigidity that plainly proved he had no desire to know him.

"I regret," Mr Ffolliot said in an impersonal voice, "that Miss Gallup has been ill. Do you know, Mary, that it is ten minutes past five?"

"Good evening, Miss Ffolliot," Eloquent said hastily; "it was most kind of you to call, and it did my aunt a great deal of good. Good-evening, Mr Ffolliot." He lifted his hat and turned away.

Mr Ffolliot stood perfectly still and looked his daughter over. From the crown of her exceedingly old hat to her admirable boots he surveyed her leisurely.

"Don't you want your tea, father?" Mary asked nervously, "or have you had it?"

"I did want tea, at the proper hour, and I have not had it; but what I want much more than tea is an explanation of that young man's presence in your society."

"I told you, father, I went to see Miss Gallup, who has had bronchitis, and he had come down from London for the week-end to see her, and so he walked back with me."

"Did you know he was there?"

"Of course not," Mary flushed angrily, "I didn't know Miss Gallup had been ill till Mrs Willets told me. I haven't been outside the grounds for a fortnight except in the bucket, so I've heard no village news."

"And why did you take it upon yourself to go outside the grounds to-day without consulting me?"

"I was rather tired of the garden, father, and it was such a lovely day, and it seemed rather unkind never to go near any of the people when mother was away."

"None of these reasons—if one can call them reasons—throws the smallest light upon the fact that you have been parading the village with this fellow, Gallup. I have told you before, I don't wish to know him, I will not know him. His politics are abhorrent to me, and his antecedents. . . . Surely by this time you know, Mary, that I do not choose my friends from among the shopkeepers in Marlehouse."

"I'm sorry, father, but this afternoon it really couldn't be helped. I couldn't be rude to the poor man when he came with me. He seemed to take it for granted he should; Miss Gallup suggested it. I daresay he didn't want to come at all. But they both meant it kindly—what could I do?"

"What you can do, and what you must do, is to obey my orders. I will not have you walk anywhere in company with that bounder——"

"He isn't a bounder, father. You're wrong there; whatever he may be he isn't that."

Mr Ffolliot turned slowly and entered the drive. Mary followed, and in silence they walked up to the house.

He looked at his tall daughter from time to time. She held her head very high and her expression was rebellious. She really was an extremely handsome girl, and, in spite of his intense annoyance, Mr Ffolliot felt gratification in this fact.

At the hall door he paused. "I must ask you to remember, Mary, that you are no longer a child, that your actions now can evoke both comment and criticism, and I must ask you to confine your friendships to your own class."

"I shall never be able to do that," Mary answered firmly; "I love the village people far too much."

"That is a wholly different matter, and you know very well that I have always been the first to rejoice in the very friendly relations between us and—er—my good tenants. This Gallup person is not one of them. There is not the smallest necessity to know him, and what's more, I decline to know him. Do you understand?"

"No, father, I don't. I can't promise to cut Mr Gallup or be rude to him if I happen to meet him; he has done nothing to deserve it. You don't ask us to cut that odious Rabbich boy, who is a bounder, if you like."

"I know nothing about the Rabbich boy, as you call him. If he is what you say, I should certainly advise you to drop his acquaintance; but I must and do insist that you shall not further cultivate the acquaintance of this young Gallup."

"He's going back to London to-morrow afternoon, father. What is there to worry about?"

Mr Ffolliot sighed. "I shall be glad," he exclaimed, "when your mother returns."

"So will everybody," said Mary.



CHAPTER XX

THE GRANTLY STRAIN

Easter, that year, fell in the second week of April, and both Grantly and the twins were home for it. Mrs Ffolliot was back too. The Riviera had done wonders for her, and she returned beautiful and gay, and immensely glad to have her children round her once more.

To celebrate Mrs Ffolliot's return, it was decided to give a dinner-party. Dinner-parties were rare occurrences at the Manor. The Squire allowed about two a year, and grumbled a good deal over each. If he would have left the whole thing to Mrs Ffolliot, she and everyone else would have enjoyed it; but he would interfere. Above all, he insisted on supervising the list of guests, and settling who was to go in with whom. This time they were to number fourteen in all, and as Grantly and Mary were to be of the party, that left ten people to be discussed.

It was arranged with comparative ease till about a week before the day fixed the bachelor intended for Mary broke his leg out hunting. Mary had been allowed a new dress for the occasion; it would be the first time she had been at a real party in her father's house, and to be left out would have been a cruel disappointment.

Bachelors in that neighbourhood, even elderly bachelors, who came up to the standard required by Mr Ffolliot were few, and there was comparatively little time.

The four elder children, their father, and mother were sitting at lunch; they had reached the cheese stage. Fusby and his attendant maid had departed, and the question of a "man for Mary" occupied the attention of the family. When Mrs Ffolliot quite innocently discharged a bomb into their midst by exclaiming, "I've got it. Let's ask Mr Gallup. He's our member; he was very kind in coming to tell me about poor Buz's accident, very kind to him, too, I remember. It would be a friendly thing to do. The Campions are coming, they'd be pleased."

Had Mrs Ffolliot not been gazing straight at her husband, she might have noticed that three pairs of startled eyes looked up at the same moment, and then were bent sedulously on the table.

Uz alone curiously regarded his brethren. Mr Ffolliot paused in the very act of pouring himself out another glass of marsala and set the decanter on the table with a thump, the glass only half-full.

"Impossible," he said coldly, "absolutely out of the question."

"But why?" Mrs Ffolliot asked; "there's nothing against the young man, and it would be a friendly thing to do."

"That's why I won't have it done," Mr Ffolliot said decidedly. "It would give a false impression. He might be disposed to take liberties."

"Oh no, Larrie; why should you think anything of that sort? It seems to me such a pity people in the county shouldn't be friendly. The Campions speak most highly of him."

"My dear"—Mr Ffolliot spoke with evident self-restraint—"I do not care to ask my friends to meet Mr Gallup as an equal. How could you ask any lady of your own rank to go in to dinner with him? The thing is outrageous."

"I was going to send him in with Mary," Mrs Ffolliot said innocently. "We must get somebody, and I know he's in the neighbourhood, for I saw him to-day."

"If he were in Honolulu he would not be more impossible than he is at present," said the Squire irritably. "Don't discuss it any more, my dear, I beg of you. It is out of the question."

And Mr Ffolliot rose from the table and took refuge in his study.

"I'm sorry," Mrs Ffolliot sighed, "I should have liked to ask him," and then she suddenly awoke to the fact that her entire family looked perturbed and miserable to the last degree.

Grantly pushed back his chair. "May I go, mother," he said, "I've something I must say to father."

"Not now, Grantly," and Mrs Ffolliot laid a gentle detaining hand upon his arm as he passed, "not just when he's feeling annoyed—if there's anything you have to tell him let it wait—don't go and worry him now."

Grantly lifted his mother's hand off his arm very gently. "I must, mummy dear, it can't wait."

He looked rather pale but his eyes were steady, and she thought with a little thrill of pride how like his grandfather he was growing.

He went straight to the study. Mr Ffolliot was seated by the fire with Gaston Latour open in his hand.

Grantly shut the door, crossed to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at his father. "I've come to say, father, that I think we ought to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."

"You think we ought to . . ." the Squire paused in breathless astonishment.

"Yes, sir, I do. And I hope you'll think so too when you hear what I've got to say."

"Go on," said Mr Ffolliot, laying down his book. "Go on."

It wasn't very easy. Grantly swallowed something in his throat, and began rather huskily: "You see, sir, we're under an obligation to Gallup. We are really."

"We are under an obligation. What on earth do you mean?"

"Well I am, father, anyway. You remember the night before the election——?"

"I don't," the Squire interrupted, "why in the world should I——?"

"Well, sir, it was like this . . . I went to dinner with young Rabbich at the Moonstone, and I got drunk——"

"You—got—drunk?" the pauses between each word were far more emphatic than the words themselves.

"Yes, sir, we all had more than was good for us, and we went to the Radical meeting and made an awful row, and got chucked out and——"

"Look here, Grantly, what has all this to do with young Gallup? It was idiotic of you to go to his meeting, and the conduct of a vulgar blockhead to get drunk; but in what way . . ."

"That's not all, sir; after the meeting the bands came into collision, and I got taken up."

"You got taken up?"

"Two policemen, sir, taking me to the station, and Mr Gallup got me out of it and gave me a bed in his house."

Mr Ffolliot sat forward in his chair. "You accepted his hospitality—you slept the night in his house?"

"If I hadn't I'd have slept the night in the lock-up, and it would have been in the papers."

"But why—why should he have intervened to protect you?"

"Do you think, sir"—Grantly's voice was very shy—"that it might be because we both come from the same place?"

"He doesn't belong to the village."

"In a way he does; there have been Gallups in Redmarley nearly as long as us."

Mr Ffolliot said nothing. He sat staring at his tall young son as if he were a new person.

Grantly fidgetted and flushed and paled under this steady contemplation, saying at last: "You do see what I mean, don't you, father?"

"I do."

"That we ought to do something friendly?"

"He has certainly, through your idiotic fault, contrived to put us under an obligation. Why, I cannot think, but the fact remains. I do not know anything that could have annoyed me more."

Grantly ventured to think that perhaps a paragraph in the police reports of the local newspaper might have tried the Squire even more severely, but he did not say so. He waited.

"Does your mother know of all this?"

"Oh no, father, it would make her so sorry. Must we tell her?"

"Your tenderness for her feelings in no way restrained you at the time; why this solicitude now?"

"I'd rather she knew than seem to go back on Gallup."

"You may go, Grantly, and leave me to digest this particularly disagreeable intelligence. I have long reconciled myself to your lack of intellectual ability, but I did not know that you indulged in such coarse pleasures."

"Father—did you never do anything of that kind when you were young?"

"Most truthfully I can answer that I never did. It would not have amused me in the least."

"It didn't amuse me," Grantly said ruefully; "I can't remember much about it."

"Go," said Mr Ffolliot, and Grantly went, looking rather like Parker with his tail between his legs.

Hardly had Mr Ffolliot realised the import of what Grantly had told him when the door was opened again and Buz came in.

Buz, too, made straight for the hearth-rug, and standing there faced his bewildered parent (these sudden invasions were wholly without precedent), saying: "I've come to tell you, sir, that I think we ought to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."

Had Mr Ffolliot been a man of his hands he would have fallen upon Buz and boxed his ears there and then; as it was, he replied bitterly:

"I am not interested in your opinion, boy, on this or any other subject. Leave the room at once."

But Buz, to his father's amazement, stood his ground.

"You must hear me, father, else you can't understand."

"If you've come to say anything about Grantly you may spare yourself the pains, he has told me himself."

"About Grantly," Buz repeated stupidly, "why should I want to talk about Grantly?—it's about him and me I want to talk."

"Him and you?" Mr Ffolliot echoed desperately.

"Yes, I rotted him that night and he was awfully decent——"

"What night?"

"The night I broke my arm—they said at the Infirmary that if he hadn't been so careful of me it would have been much worse."

"You refer, I suppose, to Gallup?"

"Yes, father, and it really was decent of him, because I went dressed up as a suffragette and had no end of a rag; he might have been awfully shirty, and he wasn't—he never told a soul. Don't you think we ought to ask him?"

"Does your mother know about this?"

"Of course not, nobody knew except Uz and," Buz added truthfully, "Adele."

"Leave me," said Mr Ffolliot feebly, "I've had about as much as I can bear this afternoon—Go."

"You do see, sir, that it makes a difference," pleaded the persistent Buz.

"Go," thundered the exasperated Squire.

"All right, father, I'm going, but you do see, don't you?" said Buz from the door.



CHAPTER XXI

A RETROSPECT AND A RESULT

Mr Ffolliot was really a much-tried man. Those interviews with Grantly and Buz caused his nerves to vibrate most unpleasantly.

So unhinged was he that for quite half an hour after Buz's departure he kept looking nervously at the door, fully expectant that it would open to admit Uz, primed with some fresh reason why Eloquent Gallup should be asked to dinner; and that he would be followed by Ger and the Kitten bent on a similar errand.

However, no one else invaded his privacy. The Manor House was very still; the only occasional sound being the soft swish of a curtain stirred by the breeze through the open window.

Mr Ffolliot neither read Gaston Latour nor did he write, though his monograph on Ercole Ferrarese was not yet completed.

Wrapped in thought he sat quite motionless in his deep chair, and the subject that engrossed him was his own youth; comparing what he remembered of it with these queer, careless sons of his, who seemed born to trouble other people, Mr Ffolliot could not call to mind any occasion when he had been a nuisance to anybody. He honestly tried and wholly failed.

Such persons as have been nourished in early youth on Mr Thackeray's inimitable The Rose and The Ring will remember how at the christening of Prince Giglio, the Fairy Blackstick, who was his godmother, said, "My poor child, the best thing I can send you is a little misfortune!"

Now the Fairy Blackstick had evidently absented herself from Hilary Ffolliot's christening, for his youth was one long procession of brilliant successes. It is true that his father, an easy-going, amiable clergyman, died during his first term at Harrow, but that did not affect Hilary's material comfort in any way. It left his mother perfectly free to devote her entire attention to him.

He was a good-looking, averagely healthy boy, who carried all before him at preparatory school. Easily first in every class he entered, he was quite able to hold his own in all the usual games, and he left for Harrow in a blaze of glory, having obtained the most valuable classical scholarship.

Throughout his career at school he never failed to win any prize he tried for, and when he left, it was with scholarships that almost covered the expenses of his time at Cambridge. Moreover, he was head of his house and a member of the Eleven.

His mother, a gentle and unselfish lady, felt that she could not do enough to promote the comfort of so brilliant and satisfactory a son. Hilary's likes and dislikes in the matter of food, Hilary's preference for silk underwear, Hilary's love of art and music, were all matters of equal and supreme importance to Mrs Ffolliot, and in every way she fostered the strain of selfishness that exists even in the best of us.

At the university he did equally well. He took a brilliant degree, and then travelled for a year or so, devoting himself to the study of Italian art and architecture; and finally accepted (he never seemed to try for things like other people) a clerkship in the Foreign Office.

When he was eight and twenty his uncle died, and he inherited Redmarley.

His conduct had always been blameless. He shared the ordinary pleasures of upper-class young men without committing any of their follies. He was careful about money, and never got into debt. He accepted kindnesses as his right, and felt under no obligation to return them.

He could not be said ever to have worked hard, for all the work he had hitherto undertaken came so easily to him. He possessed a large circle of agreeable acquaintances, and no intimate friends.

He met Marjory Grantly in her second season, and for the first time in his life fell ardently and hopelessly in love.

Now was the chance for the Fairy Blackstick!

But she evidently took no interest in Hilary Ffolliot, for Marjory, instead of sending him about his business, and perhaps thus rendering him for a space the most miserable of men, fell in love with him, and they were married in three months.

The General, it is true, had misgivings, and remarked to Mrs Grantly that Ffolliot seemed too good to be true. But there was no disproving it; and Hilary was so much in love that for a while, for nearly a year, he thought more about Marjory's likes and dislikes than his own.

And Marjory's likes included such a vast number of other people.

But the chance, the hundred-to-one chance, of turning him into an ordinary human being—loving, suffering, understanding—was lost.

Once more in Life's Market he had got what he wanted at his own price, and with the cessation of competitive examinations all ambition seemed dead in him.

And what of Marjory?

Nobody, not even her father and mother who loved her so tenderly, ever knew what Marjory felt. She had chosen her lot. She would abide by it. No doubt she saw her husband as he was, but as time went on she realised how few chances he had had to be anything different. She was an only child herself. She, too, had adoring parents, but their adoration took a different form from the somewhat abject and wholly blind devotion of Hilary's mother. General and Mrs Grantly saw to it from the very first that they should love their daughter because she was lovable, and not only because she was theirs. They had troops of friends, and exercised a large hospitality that entailed a constant giving out of sympathy for and interest in other people. That there was much suffering, and sadness, and sin in the world was never concealed from Marjory in her happy girlhood; that it had not touched her personally was never allowed to foster the belief that it did not exist. That there was also much happiness, and gaiety, and kindness was abundantly manifest in her own home, and every scope was given her for the development of the social instincts which were part of her charm. She went to her husband at twenty "handled and made," and twenty years of married life had only perfected the work.

As a girl she was perhaps intellectually intolerant. Stupid people annoyed her, and she possessed all youth's enthusiastic admiration for achievement, for people who did things, who had arrived. Hilary Ffolliot was a new type to her. His brilliant record impressed her. His cultivated taste and extraordinary versatility attracted her, and his evident admiration gratified her girlish vanity.

She was a proud woman, and if she had made a mistake she was not going to let it spoil her life. Only once did she come near showing her heart even to her mother. It was a year after the Kitten was born, when the General had just got the command at Woolwich, and Mrs Grantly once more came back to the assault—her constant plea that she should have Ger given over to her entirely.

"You really are, Margie, a greedy, grasping woman. Here are you with six children, four of them sons. And here am I with only one child, a miserable, measly girl, and you won't let me have even one of the boys."

The miserable, measly girl referred to laughed and knelt down at her mother's knee. "Dearest, you really get quite as much of the children as is good for you—or them——"

"You can't say I spoil them; I didn't spoil you, and you were only one."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more," Mrs Ffolliot said contritely; "but you see, mother dear, it's like this, it's just because I was only one I want the children to have as much as possible of each other . . . while they are young . . . I want them to grow up . . ." Mrs Ffolliot sat down on the floor and leant her head against Mrs Grantly's knees so that her face was hidden. "I want them to realise what a lot of other people there are in the world, all with hopes and fears and likes and dislikes and joys and sorrows . . . and that each one of them is only a very little humble atom of a great whole—and that's what they can teach each other—I can't do it—you can't do it—but they can manage it amongst them."

Mrs Grantly did not answer; quick as she was in repartee, she had the much rarer gift of sympathetic silence. She laid a kind hand on her daughter's bent head and softly stroked it.

The clock struck four, and still Mr Ffolliot sat on in his chair with Gaston Latour unopened, held loosely in his long slender hands.

A dignified presence with every attribute that goes to make the scholar and the gentleman; though one who judged of character from external appearance might have misdoubted the thin straight lips, the rather pinched nostrils, the eyes too close together, and above all, the head—high and intellectual, but almost devoid of curve at the back. A clean-cut, ascetic, handsome face, as a rule calm and judicial in its dignified repose.

This afternoon, though, the Squire lacks his usual serene poise. His self-confidence has been shaken, and it is his young sons who have disturbed its delicately adjusted equilibrium.

He was puzzled.

It is a mistake to imagine that selfish and ungrateful people fail to recognise these qualities in others. Not only are they quick to perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise of their opposites in their fellow men.

Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.

Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in conversation, were "fine shades" and "fineness" in its most psychological sense. "Fineness" was a quality he was for ever belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.

And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.

What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated "you do understand, don't you, father?" rang in his ears.

How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?

Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his children that were by no means equally clear to him.

Why was this?

As if in answer came his own phrase, used so often in contemptuous explanation of their more troublesome vagaries—"the Grantly Strain."

He was fair-minded and he admired courage. He in no way underrated the effort it must have been for Grantly and Buz to come and confess their peccadillos to him. And he knew very well that only because they felt someone else was involved had they summoned up courage to do so.

If their evil-doings were discovered, they did not lie, these noisy, blundering children of his; but they never showed the smallest desire to draw attention to their escapades.

His mind seemed incapable of concentration that afternoon, for now he began to wonder how it was that "the children" lately had managed to emerge from the noun of multitude and each had assumed a separate identity with marked and definite characteristics.

There was Mary . . .

Mr Ffolliot frowned. If it hadn't been for Mary he really would have been quite glad to ask young Gallup to dinner. But Mary complicated matters; for he had instantly divined what had struck none of the others, a connection between the Liberal member's amiability to his sons and the fact that those sons possessed a sister.

Presently Fusby came in to make up the fire. "Do you happen to know, Fusby, if your mistress is in the house and disengaged?"

"I saw the mistress as I came through the 'all, sir, sitting in a window reading a book. She was quite alone, sir."

"Ah," said Mr Ffolliot, "thank you, I will go to her."

As the door was closed behind his master, Fusby arose from brushing the hearth and shook his fist in that direction.

"Go, I should think you would go, you one-eyed old image you. Did you think I was going to fetch her to wait your pleasure?"

Mrs Ffolliot laid down her book as her husband came across the wide old hall. She made room for him on the window-seat beside her. She noticed that he was flushed and that his hair was almost shaggy.

"Have you got a headache, Larrie?" she asked in her kind voice. "I hope Grantly had nothing disturbing to relate."

"Yes, no," Mr Ffolliot replied vaguely; "I've been thinking things over, my dear, and I've come round to your opinion that perhaps it would be the right thing to ask young Gallup to dinner on the twenty-first. There will be the Campions and the Wards to keep him in countenance."

"I'm so glad you see it as I do," Mrs Ffolliot said gently, looking, however, much surprised. "After all, he may not come, you know."

"He'll come," and his wife wondered why the Squire laid such grim emphasis upon the words.

"By the way," Mr Ffolliot said in quite a new tone, "you were saying something the other day about your mother's very kind offer to have Mary for some weeks after the May drawing-room. I think it would be a good thing. You don't want the fag and expense of going up to town so soon after you've come home. Let her stay with her grandmother for a bit and go out—see that she has proper clothes—they will enjoy having the child, and she will see something of the world. Let her have her fling—don't hurry her."

"Why, Hilary, what a volte-face! When I spoke to you about it before I was ill you said it was out of the question . . ."

"My dear," said Mr Ffolliot testily, "only stupid people think that they must never change their minds. I have decided that it will be good for Mary to leave Redmarley for a bit. You must remember that I have been carefully observing her for the last few weeks. She will grow narrow and provincial if she never meets anyone except the Garsetshire people. Surely you must see that?"

"May I tell Mary? It's such fun when you're young to look forward to things."

"Certainly tell Mary, and let her go as soon as her grandmother will have her. She'd better get what clothes she wants in town."

"She can go up with Grantly when he goes back to the Shop. It is nice of you, Larrie."

"I suppose she must stay for this tiresome dinner? Why not let her go beforehand? It's always very easy to get an odd girl."

"That wouldn't do," Mrs Ffolliot said decidedly, "the child would be disappointed—besides I want her."

Mr Ffolliot sighed. "As you will, my dear," he said meekly, "but she'd better go directly it is over."



CHAPTER XXII

THE DREAM GOES ON

"Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on Thursday night?"

Eloquent, who was spending the Easter recess at Marlehouse, had bicycled out to tea with Miss Gallup.

"You know as I'm always pleased to give you a bed any time. What do you want it then for? Are you coming to stop a bit?"

"Because," Eloquent took a deep breath and watched his aunt closely, "I'm dining at the Manor that night."

"Then," said Miss Gallup sharply, "you don't have a bed here."

"Why ever not?" and in his astonishment Eloquent dropped into the Garsetshire idiom he was usually so careful to avoid.

"Because," Miss Gallup was flushed and tremulous, "no one shall ever say I was as a drag on you."

"But, Aunt Susan, no one could say it, and if they did, what would it matter? and what in the world has that to do with giving me a bed?"

"My dear," said Miss Gallup, "I know my place if you don't. When you goes to dinner with Squire Ffolliot you must go properly from Marlehouse like anybody else—you must drive out, or hire a motor and put it up there, same as other people do, and go back again to your own house where you're known to be—it's in the paper. There's no sort of use draggin' me in. I always knew as you'd get there some day, and now you've got there and no one's pleasder than me. Do show me the invitation."

Eloquent took a note from his breast-pocket and handed it to his aunt, who put on her spectacles and read aloud, slowly and impressively:—

Dear Mr Gallup,—If you have no other engagement, will you come and dine with us on the twenty-first at eight o'clock. It will give us great pleasure if you can.—Yours sincerely,

MARGERY FFOLLIOT.

"H'm, now that's not what I should have expected," Miss Gallup said in a disappointed tone. "I should have thought she'd 'a said, 'Mr and Mrs Ffolliot presents their compliments to Mr Gallup, and requests the pleasure of his company at a dinner-party'—I know there is a party, for Dorcas did tell Em'ly-Alice there was going to be one; only last night she was talking about it—it's downright blunt that note—I call it——"

Eloquent laughed. "All the same I've accepted, and now do explain why I can't sleep here instead of trailing all the way back into Marlehouse at that time of night."

"If you can't see, why you must just take my word for it. You and me's in different walks of life, and it's my bounden duty to see as you don't bemean yourself. I'm always pleased to see you in a quiet way, but there's no use in strangers knowing we're relations."

"What nonsense," Eloquent exclaimed hotly, "I've only got one aunt in the world, and I'm very proud of her, so let there be an end of this foolishness."

Miss Gallup wiped her eyes. "In some ways, Eloquent," she said huskily, "with all your politics an' that, you're no better than a child."

"I'm hanged if I can see what you're driving at," Eloquent exclaimed in great irritation. "Once more, Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on Thursday?"

"Don't ask me, my dear, don't ask me. It's for your good as I refuse. I can see the difference between us if you can't, and when you took on so with politics, and then your father left all that fortune so as you could leave the likes of the Golden Anchor, I said to myself, 'Now, Martha Gallup, don't you interfere. Don't you go intrudin' on your brother's child. If he sees fit to keep friendly it shows he's a good heart, but you keep your place.' . . . An' I've kep' it; never have I been near you in Marlehouse, as you know—Not but what you've as't me, and very pleased I was to be as't . . ."

"And very displeased I was that you would never come," Eloquent interrupted.

"I know my place," Miss Gallup persisted. "I don't mind the likes of the Ffolliots knowing we're related. . . . They're bound to know, and they're not proud, none of 'em exceptin' Squire, that is to say, and he wouldn't think it worth while to be proud to the likes of me. But I don't want to hang on and keep you down, and there's some as would think less of you for me bein' your aunt, so where's the use of flaunting an old-fashioned piece like me in their faces. . . . If you'll come out next day and tell me all about the party, I'd take it most kind of you, Eloquent, that I should."

"Why shouldn't I come here straight that night? I shouldn't have forgotten anything by then."

"No," Miss Gallup said firmly. "I'd much rather you didn't come to me from that 'ouse nor go there from me. You go back 'ome like a good boy. It isn't as if you couldn't afford a chaise to bring you."

Eloquent saw that she really meant what she said. He was puzzled and rather hurt, for it had never occurred to him that his aunt was anything but his aunt: a kindly garrulous old lady who had always been extremely good to him, whom it was his duty to cherish, who looked upon him in the light of a son.

He was a simple person and never realised that this simplicity and directness had a good deal to do with the undoubted cordiality of certain persons, who, apart from politics, were known to be very exclusive in the matter of their acquaintance; and that it was largely owing to the fact that he never showed the smallest false shame as to his origin, that members of his party who had at first consented to know him solely for political reasons, continued to know him when the Liberal Government was for a second time firmly established. They perceived his primness, were faintly amused by his immense earnestness, and they respected his sincerity.

The manner of his arrival on the fateful night was settled for him by Sir George Campion, who, meeting him in the street, offered him a seat in their motor. Eloquent never knew that Mrs Ffolliot had asked Sir George to do this, thinking that it would make things easier and pleasanter for the guest who was the one stranger to the assembled party.

On the night of the dinner Mary was dressed early and went to her mother's room to see if she could help her.

Mrs Ffolliot was standing before her long glass and Sophia was shaking out the train of her dress, a soft grey-blue dress full of purple shadows and silvery lights.

She turned and looked at her tall young daughter, critically, fondly, with the pride and fear and wonder a woman, above all a beautiful woman, feels as she realises that for her child everything is yet to come; the story all untold.

"You may go, Sophia," she said gently. "I think Miss Mary looks nice, don't you? It's her first real evening frock, you know."

Sophia looked from the one to the other and her severe face relaxed a little. "It fits most beautiful," she vouchsafed.

"Mother," Mary said when Sophia had gone, "I wanted to catch you just a minute—I've seen Mr Gallup since that night he came to tell us about Buz . . ."

"You've met?" Mrs Ffolliot exclaimed, "where? and why have you never told me?"

"It was while you were away. Miss Gallup had been ill and I went to ask for her and he was there, and he walked home with me . . ."

Mrs Ffolliot raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, you think it funny too? It couldn't be helped—old Miss Gallup seemed to think it was the proper thing and sent him—and father was waiting for me at the gate and was awfully cross. . . . Mother, how did you persuade him to let you ask Mr Gallup?"

Mrs Ffolliot turned to her dressing-table and began to collect fan and handkerchief. She looked in the glass and saw Mary behind her, eager, radiant, slim, upright, and gloriously young. She began to see why father was so awfully cross. There was more excuse than usual.

"Why don't you answer me, mother? didn't you hear what I said?"

"I heard, my darling. Father needed no persuasion. He simply changed his mind; but I can't think why you never told me you had met Mr Gallup already."

Mary blushed. The warm colour dyed forehead and neck and ears, and faded into the exceedingly white chest and shoulders, revealed to the world for the first time.

Mrs Ffolliot saw all this in the glass, wondered if she could have imagined it, and turned to face her daughter.

"Mother"—what honest eyes the child had, to be sure—"it wasn't the first time I'd spoken to him."

"Really, Mary, you are very mysterious——"

"I met him in the woods once before Christmas, and he was lost, and I showed him the way out, and father saw us . . . and was just as cross."

Mrs Ffolliot felt more in sympathy with her husband than usual. But all she said was, "Well, well, it's evident you don't need an introduction. I forgot you'd seen him when he called. I'm glad you told me in time to prevent it, or he would have thought it so odd—come, my child, we must go down."

"You aren't cross, are you, mother?" Mary asked wistfully.

"Cross!" Mrs Ffolliot repeated, "at your first party. What is there to be cross about? Yes, my child, that dress is quite charming—father was right, you can stand that dead white—but it's trying to some people—come."

The Campions called for Eloquent, and he found himself seated side by side with Sir George on one of the little seats, while Lady Campion and a pretty niece called Miss Bax sat opposite. Miss Bax was disposed to be friendly and conversational, but to Eloquent the fact that he was going to Redmarley was no ordinary occurrence, and he would infinitely have preferred to have driven out alone, or, better still, to have walked through the soft spring night from his aunt's house to the Manor, which still held something of the glamour that had surrounded it in his childhood.

For him it was still "the Manshun," immense, remote, peopled by inhabitants fine and strange, and far removed from ordinary life. A house whose interior common folk were, it is true, occasionally allowed to see, walking on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, led and instructed by an important rustling old lady who wore an imposing cap and a silk apron; a strange, silent house where none save servants ever seemed to come and go. He had not yet quite recovered from the shock it was to him to hear voices and laughter in that old panelled hall which he had known in childhood as so vast and shadowy. He liked to remember all this, and to feel that he was going there as THEIR guest, to be with THEM on intimate friendly terms. It was wonderful, incredible; it was part of the dream.

". . . don't you think so, Mr Gallup?" asked Miss Bax, and Eloquent woke with a start to realise that he had not heard a word his pretty neighbour was saying. He was thankful that the motor was dark and that the others could not notice how red he was.

"I beg your pardon," he said loudly, leaning forward, "I didn't catch what you said."

"Is the man deaf?" Miss Bax wondered, for the motor was a Rolls-Royce and singularly smooth and noiseless. "I was saying," she went on aloud, "that it will probably be my lot to go in to dinner with Grantly Ffolliot, and that cadets as a class are badly in need of snubbing; don't you agree with me?"

"I haven't met any except young Mr Ffolliot," Eloquent said primly, "and I must say he did not strike me as a particularly conceited young man."

"He isn't," Sir George broke in, "he's an exceedingly nice boy, they all are. Their mother has seen to that."

"Boys are so difficult to talk to," Miss Bax lamented; "their range is so limited, and my enthusiasm for football is so lukewarm."

"Try him on his profession," Lady Campion suggested.

"That would be worse. Cadets do nothing but tell you how hard they are worked, and what a fearful block there is in the special branch of the army they are going in for. Is young Ffolliot going to be a Sapper by any chance? for they're the worst of all—considering themselves, as they do, the brains of the army."

"I don't think so," said Sir George; "he's not clever enough. He's only got moderate ability and an uncommonly pretty seat on a horse. He'll get Field all right. But why are you so sure, my dear, that he'll be your fate? Why not Gallup here? and you could try and convert him to your views on the Suffrage question? He'd be some use, you know. He has a vote."

Again Eloquent blessed the darkness as he coloured hotly and brought his mind back to the present with a violent wrench. He knew he ought to say something, but what? He fervently hoped they would not assign him to this severe self-possessed young lady who thought cadets conceited and had political views. Heavens! she might be another Elsmaria Buttermish with no blessed transformation later on into something human and approachable.

"I'm afraid"—he heard Miss Bax talking as it were an immense way off as he floated away on the wings of his dream—"that my views would startle Mr Gallup."

The motor turned in at the drive gates, they had reached the door.

Eloquent was right in the middle of his dream.

He followed Lady Campion and Miss Bax across the hall and down a corridor to a room he had never been in when he was a child.

Fusby threw open a door and announced loudly, "Sir George and Lady Campion, Miss Bax, Mr Gallup."

They were the last of the guests.

For a little while he was less conscious of his dream. This light, bright room with white panelled walls and furniture covered with gay chintzes, soft blurred chintz in palest pinks and greens, with pictures in oval frames, and people, ordinary people that he had seen before, all talking and laughing together. This was not the Redmarley that he knew, grave and beautiful and old.

This was not the Redmarley of his dream. It came back to him as Mrs Ffolliot gave him her hand in welcome, presenting him to her husband and one or two other people. It left him as she turned away and Grantly came forward and greeted him. Grantly, tall and irreproachably well dressed, cheerful withal and quite at his ease.

Sir George had pulled Mary into the very middle of the room and held her at arm's length with laughing comments. How could men find the courage for that sort of thing? He heard him ask what she had done with her sash, and then Mrs Ffolliot said, "I think you know my daughter, Mr Gallup; will you take her in to dinner?"

And once more he was well in the middle of his dream, for he found himself in the corridor he knew, side by side with Mary, part of a procession moving towards the dining-room.

Her hand was on his arm, but the exquisite moment was a little marred by the discovery that she was quite an inch taller than he.

Eloquent had been to a good many public dinners; he had even dined with certain Cabinet Ministers, but always when there were only men. He had never yet dined with people of the Ffolliots' class in this intimate, friendly way, and he found everything a little different from what he expected. He had read very little fiction, and such mental pictures as he had evolved were drawn from his inner consciousness. As always, he wondered how they contrived to be so gay, to talk such nonsense, and to laugh at it. Seated between Mary and witty Mrs Ward, whose husband was one of his ardent supporters in the county, he did his best to join in the general conversation, but he found it hard. Miss Bax, whose premonition regarding her fate was justified, seemed to have overcome her objection to cadets. She and Grantly were just opposite to him, and he noticed with regret that Grantly was drinking champagne. It would have been better, Eloquent thought, if the boy had abstained altogether after his experience at the election. Mary, too, drank champagne, but Eloquent condoned this weakness in her case, she drank so little. Everyone drank champagne except Sir George, who preferred whisky, and Eloquent himself, who drank Apollinaris.

"Do you suffer from rheumatism?" Mary asked innocently. "Do you think it would hurt you once in a way?"

"I am not in the least rheumatic," Eloquent protested, "but I have never tasted anything intoxicating."

"Then you don't know whether you'd like it or not. Why not try some and see?" Mary suggested hospitably.

Eloquent shook his head. "Better not," he said, "you don't know what effect it might have on me."

He ate whatever was put before him, wholly unaware of its nature, and in spite of Mary's efforts to keep the conversational ball rolling gaily, he was very silent.

The dream had got him again, for he knew this room with the dark oak panelling and great old portraits of departed Ffolliots, some of them with eyes that followed you. He knew the room, but as he knew it, the long narrow table, like the table in a refectory, was bare and polished and empty; or with a little cloth laid just at one end for old Mr Ffolliot.

What did they think of it now, these solemn pictured people?—this long, narrow strip of brilliant light and flowers and sparkling glass and silver, surrounded by well-dressed cheerful persons, all, apparently, laughing and talking at the same time.