“I’ll come with you,” said his wife.  “You can’t shake me off so easily, my dear.  Ha-ha!”

“It’s too rainy to start to-day,” said Cousin Gustus.  “I have known people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just such a deluge as this.  We will start to-morrow.”

“Wet or fine,” added Anonyma.

“The fact remains,” said Kew, “that I must leave you by the ten something.  I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay.  But I won’t bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks’ time, if we can’t get across the Channel.  In that case I’ll meet you one day next month—­say at Land’s End or the Firth of Forth.  Otherwise—­say forty years hence in Heaven.”

“It is very wrong to joke about Death,” said Cousin Gustus.  “I once knew a man who died with just such a joke on his lips.”

“I hope it was a better joke than that,” said Kew.  “It can’t be wrong to laugh at Death.  Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good.”

Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about Death and Immortality.

So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain.  Mrs. Russell was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes.  It was hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor of a rival notebook.

It rained very earnestly.  There was no hole in the sky for hope to look through.  The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the force of the rain.  You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained several times in the Spring of 1916.  But this day was a most perfect example of its kind.

Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing.  I am afraid I have not given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus.  I ought to have told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that he loved Kew better than any one else in the world.  I might say that the departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus’s intense grievance against the Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose that had never been pent up.

Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.

“The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever,” said Cousin Gustus.  “Talk about Iron Crosses—­Pish!  I should like to have a German here for ten minutes.  I should say to him:  ’My Kew was a good boy, I would almost say a clever boy, doing well in his profession:  no more thought than that dog has of being a soldier till War broke out.  Does that look as if we were prepared for War?’ I should say.  ’Doesn’t that show where the blame lies?’ What could he answer?”