For a year he had been working his parish single-handed—­no joke—­for his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother’s home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue.  Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon.  Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for Thirza and himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not “taken after” her; Gratian was like his own mother, and Noel’s fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin Leila, who—­poor thing!—­had made that sad mess of her life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a pretty girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the arms of a young officer in khaki:  Round and round they went, circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano sat his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was at his young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were half-closed, her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought:  ‘Nice couple!’ And had a moment’s vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge May Week—­on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must have been a year younger than Nollie was now!  This would be the young man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were they never going to stop?

He passed into view of those within, and said: 

“Aren’t you very hot, Nollie?”

She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious, and Eve called out: 

“It’s a bet, Uncle.  They’ve got to dance me down.”

Pierson said mildly: 

“A bet?  My dears!”

Noel murmured over her shoulder: 

“It’s all right, Daddy!” And the young man gasped: 

“She’s bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!”