“In a weird sort of way, a hobby is a man’s substitute for sport, I believe,” said Estelle’s father.  “Many have no feeling for sport; it’s left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without it.  Instead they develop an instinct for something else.  Generally it’s deadly from the sportsman’s point of view; but it seems to take the place of sport to the sportless.  How old ruins, or church bells, can supersede a vital, living thing, like the sport of a nation, of course you and I can’t explain; but so it is with some minds.”

“It depends how they were brought up,” suggested Raymond.

“No—­take you; you weren’t brought up to sport.  But your own natural, good instinct took you to it.  Same with me.  The moment I saw a ball, I’m told that I shrieked till they gave it to me—­at the age of one that was.  And from that time forward they had no trouble with me.  A ball always calmed me.  Why?  Because a ball, you may say, is the emblem of England’s greatness.  I was thinking over it not long ago.  There is not a single game of the first importance that does not depend on a ball.  If one had brains, one could write a book on the inner meaning of that fact.  I believe that the ball has a lot to do with the greatness of the Empire.”

“A jolly good idea.  I’ll try it on Uncle Ernest,” promised Raymond.

He was cheerful and depressed in turn.  His company made him happy and the thought that he would come to live at North Hill House also pleased him well; but from time to time the drastic change in his life swept his thoughts like a cloud.  The picture of regular work—­unloved work that would enable him to live—­struck distastefully upon his mind.

They strolled over North Hill after luncheon and Estelle ran hither and thither, busy with two quests.  Her sharp eyes were in the herbage for the flowers and grasses; but she also sought the feathers of the rooks and crows who assembled here in companies.

“The wing feathers are the best for father’s pipes,” she explained; “but the tail feathers are also very good.  Sometimes I get splendid luck and find a dozen or two in a morning, and sometimes the birds don’t seem to have parted with a single feather.  The place to find them is round the furze clumps, because they catch there when the wind blows them.”

The great hogged ridge of North Hill keeps Bridetown snug in winter time, and bursts the snow clouds on its bosom.  To-day the breezes blew and shadows raced above the rolling green expanses.  The downs were broken by dry-built walls and spattered with thickets of furze and white-thorn, black-thorn and elder.  Blue milkwort, buttercups and daisies adorned them, with eye-bright and the lesser, quaking grass that danced over the green.  Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron’s three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum danger before he darted in.  It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the bunting and carrion crow.