“How many acres?” asked Crowther.

“Oh, don’t ask me!  Piers will tell you.  Piers knows.  Where the devil is the boy?  Why doesn’t he come?”

“Here, sir, here!” cried Piers, coming up behind him.  “I see you have made the acquaintance of my friend.  Crowther, let me present you to my grandfather, Sir Beverley Evesham!  I’ve just been to look for you,” he added to the latter.  “But Victor told me you had gone out, and then I spied you out of the window.”

“I told you I was coming out, didn’t I?” growled Sir Beverley.  “So this is a friend of yours, is it?  How is it I’ve never heard of him before?”

“We lost sight of each other,” explained Piers, pulling forward a chair between them and dropping into it.  “But that state of affairs is not going to happen again.  How long are you over for, Crowther?”

“Possibly a year, possibly more.”  Again Crowther’s eyes were upon him, critical but kindly.

“Going to spend your time in England?” asked Piers.

Crowther nodded.  “Most of it, yes.”

“Good!” said Piers with satisfaction.  “We shall see plenty of you then.”

“But I am going to be busy,” said Crowther, with a smile.

“Of course you are.  You can come down and teach me how to make the Home Farm a success,” laughed Piers.

“I shall be very pleased to try,” said Crowther, “though,” he turned towards Sir Beverley, “I expect you, sir, know as much on that subject as either of us.”

Sir Beverley’s eyes were upon him with searching directness.  He seemed to be trying to discover a reason for his boy’s obvious pleasure in his unexpected meeting with this man who must have been nearly twice his age.

“I’ve never done much in the farming line,” he said briefly, in answer to Crowther’s observation.  “It’s been more of a pastime with me than anything else.  It’s the same with Piers here.  He’s only putting in time with it till the constituency falls vacant.”

“I see,” said Crowther, adding with his quiet smile:  “There seems to be plenty of time anyhow in the old country, whatever else she may be short of.”

Piers laughed as he lifted his glass.  “Time for everything but work, Crowther.  She has developed beastly loose morals in her old age.  Some day there’ll come a nasty bust up, and she may pull herself together and do things again, or she may go to pieces.  I wonder which.”

“I don’t,” said Crowther.

“You don’t?” Piers paused, glass in hand, looking at him expectantly.

“No, I don’t.”  Crowther also raised his glass; he looked Piers straight in the eyes.  “Here’s to the boys of England, Piers!” he said.  “They’ll see to it that she comes through.”

Sir Beverley also drank, but with a distasteful air.  “You’ve a higher opinion of the young fools than I have,” he remarked.

“I’ve made a study of the breed, sir,” said Crowther.