’The train was abominably late.  Travelling is becoming a perfect nuisance!  I gave the station-master a piece of my mind,’ said the Squire angrily.

’And I expect he said that you civilians jolly well have to wait for the munition trains!’

‘He muttered some nonsense of that sort.  I didn’t listen to him.’  The Squire threw himself down in an arm-chair.  Desmond perched on the corner of a table near.  Elizabeth discreetly took up her work and disappeared.

‘How much time have you got?’ asked the Squire abruptly.

’Oh, a few minutes.  Aubrey and I are to have some supper before I go.  But Forest’ll come and tell me.’

‘Everything ready?  Got money enough?’

’Rather!  I shan’t want anything for an age.  Why, I shall be buying war-loan out of my pay!’

He laughed happily.  Then his face grew suddenly serious.

‘Look here, father—­I want awfully to say something.  Do you mind?’

‘If you want to say it, I suppose you will say it.’

The Squire was sitting hunched up, looking old and tired, his thick white hair piled fantastically above his eyes.

Desmond straightened his shoulders with the air of one going over the parapet.

’Well, it’s this, father.  I do wish you’d give up that row about the park!’

The Squire sat up impatiently.

‘That’s not your business, Desmond.  It can’t matter to you.’

‘Yes, but it does matter to me!’ said the boy with energy.  ’It’ll be in all the papers—­the fellows will gas about it at mess—­it’s awfully hard lines on me.  It makes me feel rotten!’

The Squire laughed.  He was reminded of a Fourth of June years before, when Desmond had gone through agonies of shame because his father was not, in his eyes, properly ‘got-up’ for the occasion—­how he had disappeared in the High Street, and only joined his people again in the crowd at the fireworks.

’I recommend you to stick it, Desmond.  It won’t last long.  I’ve got my part to play, and you’ve got yours.  You fight because they make you.’

‘I don’t!’ said the boy passionately.  ‘I fight because—­’

Then his words broke down.  He descended from the table.

’Well, all right, father.  I suppose it’s no good talking.  Only if you think I shan’t mind if you get yourself put in quad, you’re jolly well mistaken.  Hullo, Forest!  I’m coming!’

He hurried off, the Squire moving slowly after him.  In the hour before the boy departed he was the spoilt darling of his sisters and the servants, who hung round him, and could not do enough for him.  He endured it, on the whole, patiently dashing out at the very end to say good-bye to an old gardener, once a keeper, with whom he used to go ferreting in the park.  To his father alone his manner was not quite as usual.  It was the manner of one who had been hurt.  The Squire felt it.

As to his elder son, he and Aubrey parted without any outward sign of discord, and on the way to London Aubrey, with the dry detachment that was natural to him in speaking of himself, told the story of the preceding twenty-four hours to the eager Desmond’s sympathetic ears.  ‘Well done, Broomie!’ was the boy’s exultant comment on the tale of the codicil.