A wishing gate led into the garden, and Isabel made for an open window, but halfway over the sill she paused, gazing with all her soul in her eyes across the vicarage gooseberry bushes.  That grey suit was Val’s of course, but who was inside the belted coat and riding breeches?  “Rows-lee!” sang out Isabel, tumbling back into the garden with a generous display of leg.  The raiders rose up each holding a handful of large red strawberries melting ripe, and Isabel, pitching in her racquet on a sofa, ran across the grass and enfolded her brother in her arms.  Rowsley, dark and slight and shrewd, returned her hug with one arm, while carefully guarding his strawberries with the other—­“You pig, you perfect pig!” wailed Isabel.  “I was saving them for tea tomorrow, Laura’s coming and I can’t afford a cake.  Oh joy, you can buy me one!  How long can you stay?”

“Over the week end:  but I didn’t come to buy you cakes, Baby.  I haven’t any money either.  I came because I wanted you to buy me cakes.”

“O well never mind, I’ll make one,” Isabel joyously slipped her hand through Rowsley’s arm.  “Then I can get the flour from the baker and it won’t cost anything at all—­it’ll go down in the bill.  Well give me one anyhow, now they’re picked it would be a pity to waste them.”  She helped herself liberally out of Val’s hand.  “Now stop both of you, you can’t have any more.”

She linked her other arm in Val’s and dragged her brothers out of the dangerous proximity of the strawberry beds.  Val sat down on a deck chair, one leg thrown over the other, Rowsley dropped at full length on the turf, and Isabel doubled herself up between them, her arms clasped round her knees.  “How’s the Old Man?” she asked in friendly reference to Rowsley’s commanding officer.  “Oh Rose, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you.  Will Spillsby be able to play on the Fourth?” Spillsby, a brother subaltern and a famous bat, had twisted his ankle at the nets, and Rowsley in his last letter had been uncertain whether he would be well enough to play the Sappers at the annual fixture.

Happily Rowsley was able to reassure his young sister:  the ankle was much better and Spillsby was already allowed to walk on it.  Isabel then turned her large velvet eyes—­gazelle eyes with a world of pathos in their velvet gloom on her elder brother.  “Coruscate, Val,” she commanded.  “You haven’t said anything at all yet.  We should all try to be bright in the home circle.  We cannot all be witty, but-Ow!  Rowsley, if you pull my hair I shall hit you in the—­in the place where the Gauls fined their soldiers if they stuck out on parade.  Oh, Val, that really isn’t vulgar, I found it in Matthew Arnold!  Their stomachs, you know.  They wouldn’t have fined you anyhow.  You look fagged, darling—­ are you?”

“Not so much fagged as hungry,” said Val in his soft voice.  “It’s getting on for nine o’clock and I was done out of my tea.  I went in to Wanhope, but Laura was out, and Clowes was drinking whisky and soda.  I cannot stand whisky at four in the afternoon, and Irish whisky at that.  There’ll be some supper going before long, won’t there?”