Again Harvey laughed.

‘Good old chap!  What a pity he can’t be cracking crowns somewhere!’

‘Oh!  I’m sure I’d rather see him making bicycles.’

’’Tisn’t his vocation.  He ought to go somewhere and get up a little war of his own —­ as he once told me he should like to.  We can’t do without the fighting man.’

‘Will you bring Hughie up to it, then?’

Harvey fixed his eyes on a point far off.

’I fear he won’t have the bone and muscle.  But I should like him to have the pluck.  I’m afraid he mayn’t, for I’m a vile coward myself.’

‘I should like a child never to hear or know of war,’ said Mrs Frothingham fervently.

‘And so should I,’ Harvey answered, in a graver tone.

When Mrs. Frothingham went upstairs with the letter for Alma, he broke open another envelope.  It was from Mary Abbott, who wrote to him twice a year, when she acknowledged the receipt of his cheque.  She sent the usual careful report concerning Wager’s children —­ the girl now seven years old, and the boy nine.  Albert Wager, she thought, was getting too old for her; he ought to go to a boys’ school.  Neither he nor his sister had as yet repaid the care given to them; never were children more difficult to manage.  Harvey read this between the lines; for Mary Abbott never complained of the task she had undertaken.  He rose and left the room with a face of anxious thoughtfulness.

The day was wont to pass in a pretty regular routine.  From half-past nine to half-past one Harvey sat alone in his study, not always energetically studious, but on the whole making progress in his chosen field of knowledge.  He bought books freely, and still used the London Library.  Of late he had been occupying himself with the authorities on education; working, often impatiently, through many a long-winded volume.  He would have liked to talk on this subject with Mary Abbott, but had not yet found courage to speak of her paying them a visit.  The situation, difficult because of Alma’s parentage, was made more awkward by his reticence with Alma regarding the payment he made for those luckless children.  The longer he kept silence, the less easily could he acquaint his wife with this matter —­ in itself so perfectly harmless.

This morning he felt indisposed for study, and cared just as little to go out, notwithstanding the magnificent sky.  From his windows he looked upon the larch-clad slopes of Cam Bodvean; their beauty only reminded him of grander and lovelier scenes in far-off countries.  From time to time the wanderer thus awoke in him, and threw scorn upon the pedantries of a book-lined room.  He had, moreover, his hours of regret for vanished conviviality; he wished to step out into a London street, collect his boon-companions, and hold revel in the bygone way.  These, however, were still but fugitive moods.  All in all, he regretted nothing.  Destiny seemed to have marked him for a bookish man; he grew more methodical, more persistent, in his historical reading; this, doubtless, was the appointed course for his latter years.  It led to nothing definite.  His life would be fruitless ——­