“Now, Jack, be quiet!” said Mrs. Graves; “that is how the British paterfamilias gets made.  You must not begin to make your womankind uncomfortable in public.  You must not think aloud.  You must keep up the mysteries of chivalry!”

“I don’t care for mysteries,” said Jack, “but I’ll behave.  My father says one mustn’t seethe the kid in its mother’s milk.  I will leave Miss to her conscience.”

“Did you enjoy yourself?” said Mrs. Graves to Howard.

“Yes, I’m afraid I did,” said Howard, “very much indeed.”

“Some book I read the other day,” said Mrs. Graves, “stated that men ought to do primeval things, eat under-done beef, sleep in their clothes, drink too much, kill things.  It sounds disgusting; but I suppose you felt primeval?”

“I don’t know what it was,” said Howard.  “I felt very well content.”

“My word, he can shoot!” said Jack to Mrs. Graves; “I’m a perfect duffer beside him; he shot four-fifths of the bag, and there’s a perfect mountain of rabbits to come in.”

“Horrible, horrible!” said Mrs. Graves, “but are there enough to go round the village?”

“Two apiece,” said Jack, “to every man a damsel or two!  Now, Maud, come on—­ten o’clock, to-morrow, Sir—­and perhaps a little fishing later?”

“You had better stay to lunch, whenever you come and work in the morning, Jack,” said Mrs. Graves; “and I’ll turn you inside out before very long.”

Howard went off to his work with a pleasant sense of the open air.  They dined together quietly; after dinner he went and sate down by Mrs. Graves.

“Jack’s a nice boy,” she said, “very nice—­don’t make him pert!”

“I am afraid I shan’t make him anything,” said Howard.  “He will go his own way, sure enough; but he isn’t pert—­he comes to heel, and he remembers.  He is like the true gentleman—­he is never unintentionally offensive.”

Mrs. Graves laughed, and said, “Yes, that is so.”

Howard went on, “I have been thinking a great deal about our talk yesterday, and it’s a new light to me.  I do not think I fully understand, but I feel that there is something very big behind it all, which I want to understand.  This great force you speak of—­is it an aim?”

“That’s a good question,” said Mrs. Graves.  “No, it’s not an aim at all.  It’s too big for that; an aim is quite on a lower level.  There’s no aim in the big things.  A man doesn’t fall ill with an aim—­he doesn’t fall in love with an aim.  It just comes upon him.”

“But then,” said Howard, “is it more than a sort of artistic gift which some have and many have not?  I have known a few real artists, and they just did not care for anything else in the world.  All the rest of life was just a passing of time, a framework to their work.  There was an artist I knew, who was dying.  The doctor asked him if he wanted anything.  ‘Just a full day’s work,’ he said.”