‘Yes.  I’m due to rejoin by Monday.’

Farrell’s expression darkened.

‘You see what keeps me?’ he said, sharply, striking his left knee with the flat of his hand.  ’I had a bad fall, shooting in Scotland, years ago—­when I was quite a lad.  Something went wrong in the knee-cap.  The doctors muffed it, and I have had a stiff knee ever since.  I daresay they’d give me work at the War Office—­or the Admiralty.  Lots of fellows I know who can’t serve are doing war-work of that kind.  But I can’t stand office work—­never could.  It makes me ill, and in a week of it I am fit to hang myself.  I live out of doors.  I’ve done some recruiting—­speaking for the Lord Lieutenant.  But I can’t speak worth a cent—­and I do no good.  No fellow ever joined up because of my eloquence!—­couldn’t if he tried.  No—­I’ve given up my house—­it was the best thing I could do.  It’s a jolly house, and I’ve got lots of jolly things in it.  But the War Office and I between us have turned it into a capital hospital.  We take men from the Border regiments mostly.  I wonder if I shall ever be able to live in it again!  My sister and I are now in the agent’s house.  I work at the hospital three or four days a week—­and then I come here and sketch.  I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’

He straightened his shoulder as though defying somebody.  Yet there was something appealing, and, as it were, boyish, in the defiance.  The man’s patriotic conscience could be felt struggling with his dilettantism.  Sarratt suddenly liked him.

‘No, indeed,’ he said heartily.  ‘Why shouldn’t you?’ ’It’s when one thinks of your job, one feels a brute to be doing anything one likes.’

‘Well, you’d be doing the same job if you could.  That’s all right!’ said Sarratt smiling.

It was curious how in a few minutes the young officer had come to seem the older and more responsible of the two men.  Yet Farrell was clearly his senior by some ten or fifteen years.  Instinctively Nelly moved nearer to George.  She liked to feel how easily he could hold his own with great people, who made her feel nervous.  For she understood from Mrs. Weston that the Farrells were very great people indeed, as to money and county position, and that kind of thing.

Sarratt took his visitor downstairs, and returned, laughing to himself.

’Well, darling, I’ve promised we’ll go to his cottage one day this week.  You’ve to let him know.  He’s an odd fellow!  Reminds me of that story of the young Don at Cambridge who spent all the time he could spare from neglecting his duties in adorning his person.  And yet that doesn’t hit it quite either.  For I don’t suppose he does spend much time in adorning his person.  He doesn’t want it.  He’s such a splendid looking chap to begin with.  But I’m sure his duties have a poor time!  Why, he told me—­me, an utter stranger!—­as we went downstairs—­that being a landowner was the most boring trade in the world.  He hated his tenants, and turned all the bother of them over to his agents.  “But they don’t hate me”—­he said—­“because I don’t put the screw on.  I’m rich enough without.”  By Jove, he’s a queer specimen!’