As for Radmore, he felt just a little jarred by her words.  Had she quite forgotten all that had happened in that long ago which, in a sense, seemed to belong to another life?  He hadn’t, and since his arrival yesterday certain things had come back in a rushing flood of memory.

“I’ve something to do in the garden now.”  Janet was smiling—­she really did feel perhaps rather absurdly relieved.  Like Timmy, she didn’t care for Mrs. Crofton, and the mere suspicion that Godfrey Radmore had come back here to Old Place in order to carry on a love affair had disturbed her.

“By the way, how’s McPherson?” he asked abruptly.  “He is a splendid gardener and no mistake!  I’ve never seen a garden looking more beautiful than yours does just now, Janet.  I woke early this morning and looked out of my window.  I suppose McPherson’s about—­I’ll go out and speak to him.”

Her face shadowed.  “McPherson,” she said slowly, “was one of the first men to leave Beechfield.  He was perfectly fit, and he made up his mind to go at once.  You know, Godfrey—­or perhaps you don’t know—­that the Scotch glens emptied first of men?”

“D’you mean...?”

She nodded.  “He was killed at the second battle of Ypres.  He was sent to the Front rather sooner than most, for he was a very intelligent man, and really keen.  I’ve got a boy now, a lad of seventeen—­not half a bad sort, but it does seem strange to give him every Saturday just double the money I used to give McPherson!”

She went out, through into the garden, on these last words, and again there came over Radmore a feeling of poignant sadness.  How strange that he should have spent those weeks in London, knowing so little, nay, not knowing at all, what the War had really meant to the home country.

He opened the door into the corridor, and listened, wondering where they had all gone.  He had some business letters to write, and he told himself that he would go and get them done in what he still thought of in his mind as George’s room.  He had noticed that the big plain deal writing table was still there.

He went upstairs, and when he opened the bedroom door, he was astonished to find Rosamund kneeling in front of George’s old play-box, routing among what looked like a lot of papers and books.

“I’m hunting for a prescription for father,” she said, looking up.  “Timmy thinks he put it in here one day after coming back from the chemist’s at Guildford.”  She looked flushed, and decidedly cross, as she went on:  “No one’s taught Timmy to put things in their proper place, as we were taught to do, when we were children!”

Radmore felt amused.  She certainly was very, very pretty, and did not look much more than a child herself.

“Look here,” he said good-naturedly, “let me help.  I don’t think you’re going the right way to work.”  He felt just a little bit sorry for Timmy; Rosamund was raking about as if the play-box was a bran-pie.