they like it or not.  It really isn’t enough to cure people of diseases when they’ve got them.  We ought to see that they never get them, that there aren’t any to get...  What we don’t know yet is the complete behaviour of all these bacteria among themselves.  A bad bacillus may be doing good work by holding down a worse one.  It’s conceivable that if we succeeded in exterminating all known diseases we might release an unknown one, supremely horrible, that would exterminate the race.”

“Oh Eliot, how awful.  How can you sleep in your bed?”

“You needn’t worry.  It’s only a nightmare idea of mine.”

And so on and so on, for he was still so young that he wanted Anne to be excited by the things that excited him.  And Anne told him all about her Ilford farm and what she meant to do on it.  Eliot didn’t behave like Aunt Adeline, he listened beautifully, like Uncle Robert and Jerrold, as if it was really most important that you should have a farm and work on it.

“What I want is to sell it and get one here.  I don’t want to be anywhere else.  I can’t tell you how frightfully home-sick I am when I’m away.  I keep on seeing those gables with the little stone balls, and the peacocks, and the fields down to the Manor Farm.  And the hills, Eliot.  When I’m away I’m always dreaming that I’m trying to get back to them and something stops me.  Or I see them and they turn into something else.  I shan’t be happy till I can come back for good.”

“You don’t want to go to India?” Eliot’s heart began to beat as he asked his question.

“I want to work.  To work hard.  To work till I’m so dead tired that I roll off to sleep the minute I get into bed.  So tired that I can’t dream.”

“That isn’t right.  You’re too young to feel like that, Anne.”

“I do feel like it.  You feel like it yourself—­My farm is to me what your old bacteria are to you.”

“Oh, if I thought it was the farm—­”

“Why, what else did you think it was?”

Eliot couldn’t bring himself to tell her.  He took refuge in apparent irrelevance.

“You know Father left me the Manor Farm house, don’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.  I suppose he thought you’d want to come back, like me.”

“Well, I’m glad I’ve got it.  Mother’s got the Dower House in Wyck.  But she’ll stay on here till—­”

“Till Jerrold comes back,” said Anne bravely.

“I don’t suppose Jerry’ll turn her out even then.  Unless—­”

But neither he nor Anne had the courage to say “unless he marries.”

Not Anne, because she couldn’t trust herself with the theme of Jerrold’s marrying.  Not Eliot, because he had Jerrold’s word for it that if he married anybody, ever, it would not be Anne.

* * * * *