“Who to?”

Jerrold laughed.  “Why, to Eliot.  He’s got it into his dear old head that he ought to have it.  He can’t see that Eliot knows his own business best.  It would be most awfully in his way...  It’s pretty beastly for me, too.  I don’t like taking it when I know Daddy wants Eliot to have it.  That’s to say, he doesn’t want; he’d like me to have it, because I’d take care of it.  But that makes him all the more stuck on Eliot, because he thinks it’s the right thing.  I don’t like having it in any case.”

“Why ever not?”

“Well, I can only have it if Daddy dies, and I’d rather die myself first.”

“That’s how I feel about my farm.”

“Beastly, isn’t it?  Still, I’m not worrying.  Daddy’s frightfully healthy, thank Heaven.  He’ll live to be eighty at the very least.  Why—­I should be fifty.”

“You’re all right,” said Anne.  “But it’s awful for me.  Grandpapa might die any day.  He’s seventy-five now.  It’ll be ages before you’re fifty.”

“And I may never be it.  India may polish me off long before that.”  He laughed his happy laugh.  The idea of his own death seemed to Jerrold irresistibly funny.

“India?”

He laughed again at her dismay.

“Rather.  I’m going in for the Indian Civil.”

“Oh Jerrold—­you’ll be away years and years, nearly all the time, like Daddy, and I shan’t ever see you.”

“I shan’t start for ages.  Not for five years.  Lots of time to see each other in.”

“Lots of time for not seeing each other ever again.”

She sat staring mournfully, seeing before her the agony of separation.

“Nonsense,” said Jerrold.  “Why on earth shouldn’t you come out to India too?  I say, that would be a lark, wouldn’t it?  You would come, wouldn’t you?”

“Like a shot,” said Anne.

“Would you give up your farm to come?”

“I’d give up anything.”

“That’s all right.  Let’s go and play tennis.”

They played for two hours straight on end, laughing and shouting.  Adeline, intensely bored by Eliot and his absurd affairs, came down the lawn to look at them.  She loved their laughter.  It was good to have Anne there.  Anne was so happy.

John Severn came to her.

“Did you ever see anything happier than that absurd boy?” she said.  “Why can’t Eliot be jolly and contented, too, like Jerrold?”

“Don’t you think the chief reason may be that he isn’t Jerrold?”

“Jerrold’s adorable.  He’s never given me a day’s trouble since he was born.”

“No.  It’s other women he’ll give trouble to,” said John, “before he’s done.”

iii

Colin was playing.  All afternoon he had been practising with fury; first scales, then exercises.  Then a pause; and now, his fingers slipped into the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata.