“Some of us have got to go,” said Nicky.

“Quite so.  But I don’t think it ought to be you, Nicky; or John, either.”

“I suppose,” said Michael, “you mean it ought to be me.”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort.  One out of four’s enough.”

“One out of four?  Well then—­”

“That only leaves me to fight,” said Dorothy.

“I wasn’t thinking of you, Michael.  Or of Dorothy.”

They all looked at him where he sat, upright and noble, in his chair, and most absurdly young.

Dorothy said under her breath:  “Oh, you darling Daddy.”

“You won’t be allowed to go, anyhow,” said John to his father.  “You needn’t think it.”

“Why not?”

“Well—.”  He hadn’t the heart to say:  “Because you’re too old.”

“Nicky’s brains will be more use to the country than my old carcass.”

Nicky thought:  “You’re the very last of us that can be spared.”  But he couldn’t say it.  The thing was so obvious.  All he said was:  “It’s out of the question, your going.”

“Old Nicky’s out of the question, if you like,” said John.  “He’s going to be married.  He ought to be thinking of his wife and children.”

“Of course he ought,” said Anthony.  “Whoever goes first, it isn’t Nicky.”

“You ought to think of Mummy, Daddy ducky; and you ought to think of us,” said Dorothy.

“I,” said John, “haven’t got anybody to think of.  I’m not going to be married, and I haven’t any children.”

“I haven’t got a wife and children yet,” said Nicky.

“You’ve got Veronica.  You ought to think of her.”

“I am thinking of her.  You don’t suppose Veronica’d stop me if I wanted to go?  Why, she wouldn’t look at me if I didn’t want to go.”

Suddenly he remembered Michael.

“I mean,” he said, “after my saying that I was going.”

Their eyes met.  Michael’s flickered.  He knew that Nicky was thinking of him.

“Then Ronny knows?” said Frances.

“Of course she knows. You aren’t going to try to stop me, Mother?”

“No,” she said.  “I’m not going to try to stop you—­this time.”

She thought:  “If I hadn’t stopped him seven years ago, he would be safe now, with the Army in India.”

One by one they got up and said “Good night” to each other.

But Nicholas came to Michael in his room.

He said to him:  “I say, Mick, don’t you worry about not enlisting.  At any rate, not yet.  Don’t worry about Don and Daddy.  They won’t take Don because he’s got a mitral murmur in his heart that he doesn’t know about.  He’s going to be jolly well sold, poor chap.  And they won’t take the guv’nor because he’s too old; though the dear old thing thinks he can bluff them into it because he doesn’t look it.

“And look here—­don’t worry about me.  As far as I’m concerned, the War’s a blessing in disguise.  I always wanted to go into the Army.  You know how I loathed it when they went and stopped me.  Now I’m going in and nobody—­not even mother—­really wants to keep me out.  Soon they’ll all be as pleased as Punch about it.