The holidays had started badly, there was no doubt about that. All the young Ffolliots were agreed about it. First Buz broke his arm on Boxing-day. That was upsetting in itself, and Buz, as an invalid, was a terrible nuisance. Then the Ganpies had to return to Woolwich much sooner than they had expected: another matter for gloom and woe. And finally came the crushing intelligence that Mr Ffolliot did not intend to start for his oasis till the beginning of February, after the twins had gone back to school and Grantly to the Shop. And this was considered the very limit. Fate had done its worst.

No party: no relaxation of the rules as to absence of noise and presence of perfect regularity and punctuality at meals: no cheerful gathering together of neighbouring families for all sorts of junkettings; in fact, none of the usual features of the last fortnight of the Christmas holidays. And yet, in looking back afterwards, the young Ffolliots, with, perhaps, the exception of the unfortunate Buz, would have confessed that on the whole they had had rather a good time. Mary, in particular, would have owned frankly, had she been asked, that she had never enjoyed a holiday more.

For one thing, the big boys had been "so nice to her," and by "the big boys" she meant Grantly and Reggie Peel.

She and Grantly had always been great allies. When they were little they did everything together, for the three and a half years that separated Mary from the twins seemed, till they should all get into the twenties, an immeasurable distance. But Grantly hitherto had been no more polite and considerate than the average brother. He was both critical and plain-spoken, and poor Mary had suffered many things at his hands . . . till this holiday; and it never occurred to her that this agreeable change in Grantly's attitude might be due to some alteration in herself rather than in him.

Mary was far too interested in life with a big "L" to waste any time upon self-analysis or introspection. Neither she nor Grantly had ever referred to the night of young Rabbich's dinner at the Moonstone, but since that night she had been distinctly conscious of a slightly more respectful quality in his manner towards her. The tendency was indefinable, illusive, but it was there, and simple-minded Mary only reflected gratefully that Grantly was "growing up awfully nice."

Regarding Reggie Peel, however, she did venture to think that she must be rather more attractive than she used to be; and complacently attributed his new gentleness to the fact that she had put up her hair since she last saw him.

Gentleness was by no means one of Reggie's chief characteristics. He was ruthless where his own ends were concerned, tirelessly hard working, amusing, and of a caustic tongue: a cheerful pessimist who expected the very least of his fellow-creatures, until such time as they had given some proof that he might expect more. Yet there were a favoured few, a very few, whom he took for granted thankfully, and Mary had long known that her mother was one of those few. Lately she had realised with a startled thrill of gratification that she, too, had stepped out of the rank and file to take her place among those chosen ones, for Reggie had confided to her a secret that none of the others, not even her mother, knew.

Among the many serious periodicals of strictly Imperial tone that Mr Ffolliot read, was one that from time to time indulged its readers with exceptionally well-written short stories. Quite recently a couple of these stories had dealt with military subjects, and were signed "Ubique." The stories were striking, strong, and evidently from the pen of one who knew his ground. Mr Ffolliot admired them, and graciously drew the attention of his family to them. One had appeared in the January number, and Mrs Ffolliot and Mary fell foul of it because it was too painful. They thought it pitiless, even savage, in its inexorable disregard of the individual and deification of the Cause. Grantly, of course, upheld the writer. The male of the species prides itself on inhumanity in youth. Mr Ffolliot approved the story from the artistic standpoint, and the General defended it on the score of its absolute truth. Reggie, quite contrary to custom, gave no opinion at all till he was asked by Mary, one day when they were riding together.

As she expected, he defended the writer's stern realism. But what she did not expect was that he seemed to make a personal matter of it, almost imploring her to see eye to eye with him, which she wholly failed to do.

"I think he must be a terribly hard man, that 'Ubique,'" she said at last, "with no toleration or compassion. He talks as though incompetence were an unpardonable crime."

"So it is; if you undertake a job you ought to see that you're fit to carry it out."

"You can't always be sure. . . . You may do your best and . . . fail."

"I grant you some people's best is a very poor best, but in this case the man let a flabby humanitarianism take the place of his judgment, and he caused far more misery in the end. Can't you see that?"

"All the same," Mary said decidedly, "I wouldn't like to fall into the hands of that man, the Ubique man I mean, not the failure. He must be a cold-blooded wretch, or he couldn't write such things. It makes me shudder."

And Mary shivered as she spoke.

"He must be a beast," she added.

They were walking their horses along the turf at the side of the road skirting the woods. Reggie pulled up and Mary stopped also a little in front.

"Got a stone?" she asked carelessly.

Reggie did not answer or dismount, and she turned in her saddle to look at him, to meet his crooked, whimsical smile. Suddenly he dropped his reins and beat his breast, exclaiming melodramatically: "And Nathan said unto David, 'Thou art the man.'"

"What on earth do you mean?" Mary asked, bewildered. "What man? do you mean you'd behave like the man in the story, or you wouldn't, or . . . Oh, Reggie, you don't mean to say you wrote it yourself?"

"You have spoken."

"You must be awfully clever!" Mary ejaculated with awe-struck admiration.

"My cleverness will not be of much comfort to me if you persist in your wrong-headed opinion that the man who wrote that story is a beast."

"Oh, that's different. I know you, you see, and you're not a beast.
You aren't really like that."

"But I am. That's the real me. It is truly; the real, deep-down me, the me that's worth anything."

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I don't believe it; you have some consideration for other people."

"Not in that sense; if there was anything, any big thing, I had to put through—no one should stand in my way. And it's the same with anything I want very much. I go straight for it, and it matters nothing to me who gets knocked down on the route . . . and so you'll find," Reggie added very low.

They were looking each other straight in the face, Mary a little breathless and wondering: "And so you'll find," Reggie repeated a little louder, and there was a look in his eyes that caused Mary to drop hers, and she rode on.

Reggie caught her up.

"Are you sorry, Mary?" he asked gently.

"About what?"

"Well . . . about everything. The story, and my ferocious mental attitude, and all the rest of it."

He laid his hand on her horse's neck, and leaned forward to look in her face. They were riding very close together, and Mary was too near the hedge to put more distance between them.

"I can't be sorry you write so well," she said slowly, "it is very exciting—is the news for publication or not?"

"I'd be grateful if you'd say nothing as yet—you see I've only done these two, and what's a couple of short stories? Besides, it's not really my job, only it's amusing, and one can rub it in that way, and reach a larger class than by the strictly military article—no one knows anything about it except the editor of The Point of View—and you—I'd rather you didn't mention it, if you don't mind."

"Of course I shan't mention it, but I shall look out for 'Ubique' with much greater interest."

"And still think him a beast?"

"That depends on what he writes."

"I'm not so much concerned about what you think of Ubique as that you should remember that I mean what I say."

"You say a good many absurd things."

"Yes, but this is not absurd—when I want a thing very much . . ."

"Oh, you needn't say all that again. Be a silent, strong man like the heroes in Seton Merriman, they're much the best kind."

"I'm not particularly silent, but I flatter myself that . . ."

"It's a shame to crawl over this lovely grass—come on and have a canter," said Mary.

That night Reggie Peel sat long by his bedroom fire. The bedroom fire was a concession to his acknowledged grown-upness. The young Ffolliots were allowed no bedroom fires. Only when suffering from bad colds or in the very severest weather was a fire granted to any child out of the nursery. But Reggie, almost a captain now, was popular with the servants, especially with the stern Sophia, head-housemaid, and she decreed that he had reached the status of a visitor, and must, therefore, have a fire in his bedroom at night. He sat before it now, swinging the poker which had just stirred it to a cheerful blaze. He had carefully switched off the light, for they were very economical of the electric light at Redmarley. It had cost such a lot to put in.

Five years ago he and General Grantly between them had supervised its installation, and the instruction of the head-gardener in the management of the dynamo-room; each going up and down, as often as they could get away, to share the discomfort with Mrs Ffolliot, and look after the men. Mrs Grantly was, for once, almost satisfied, for she had carried off all the available children. Mr Ffolliot had decreed that the work should be done while he was in the South of France, and expressed a strong desire that all should be in order before his return; and it was finished, for he stayed away seven weeks.

And Reggie sat remembering all this, five years ago; and how just before the children were sent to their grandmother Mary used to want to sit on his knee, and how he would thrust her off with insulting remarks as to her weight and her personal appearance generally.

She was a good deal heavier now, he reflected, and yet—

Reggie had come to the parting of the ways, and had decided which he would follow.

Like most ambitious young men he had, so far, taken as his motto a couplet, which, through over-usage, has become a platitude—

"High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone,
He travels the fastest who travels alone."

Reggie had accepted this as an incontrovertible truth impossible to dispute; but then he had never until lately felt the smallest desire to travel through life accompanied by any one person. He had fallen in and out of love as often as was wholesome or possible for so hard-working a young man, and always looked upon the experience as an agreeable relaxation, as it undoubtedly is. But never for one moment did he allow such evanescent attachments to turn him a hair's breadth out of his course. Now something had happened to him, and he knew that for the future the platitude had become a lie, and that the only incentive either to high hopes or their fulfilment lay in the prospect of a hearth-stone shared by the girl who a few hours ago declared that she "would not like to fall into that man's hands."

Reggie was very modern. He built no altar to Mary in his heart nor did he set her image in a sacred shrine apart. He had no use for anyone in a shrine. He wanted a comrade, and he craved this particular comrade with all the intensity of a well-disciplined, entirely practical nature. He was not in the least conceited, but he knew that if he lived he would "get there," and the fact that he never had had, or ever would have, sixpence beyond the pay he earned did not deter him in his quest a single whit. Mary wouldn't have sixpence either. He knew the Redmarley rent-roll to a halfpenny. Mrs Ffolliot frankly talked over her affairs with him ever since he left Woolwich, and more than once his shrewd judgment unravelled some tangle which Mr Ffolliot's singularly unbusiness-like habits had created. He knew very well that were it not for General Grantly the boys could never have got the chance each was to get. That General Grantly was spending the money he would have left his daughter at his death in helping her children now when they needed it most. Mary and he were young and strong. They could rough it at first. Afterwards—he had no fears about that afterwards if Mary cared.

But would Mary care?

Reggie felt none of the qualms of a more sensitive man in making love to a very young girl who might certainly, both as regarded looks and social position, be expected to make an infinitely better marriage. He was assailed by no misgivings as to what might be thought of the man who made use of his position as almost a son of the house to make love to this girl hardly out of the schoolroom.

It was Mr Ffolliot's business to guard against such possibilities.

If, however, he might be called unscrupulous on that score, his sense of fairness was stronger than his delicacy; for where the latter proved no obstacle, the former decided him that it would not be playing the game to make open love to Mary till she had "been out a bit," and he laid down the poker with a smothered oath.

He had gone further than he intended that afternoon and he was sorry—but not very sorry. "There's no harm in letting her know I'm in the running," he reflected. "I hope it will sink in. Otherwise she might stick me down in the same row with Grantly and the twins, which is the last thing in the world I want."

He was glad he had told her about that story, even if it revealed him in an unfavourable light. "If she ever cares for me, and God help me if she doesn't—she must care for me as I really am, an ugly devil with some brains and a queer temper. I'll risk no disillusionment afterwards. She must see plenty of other chaps first—confound them; but if any one out of the lot shows signs of making a dart I'll cut in first, I won't wait another minute, I'm damned if I will."

And suddenly conscious that he had spoken aloud, Reggie undressed and went to bed, knowing full well that even though the hearth-stone should be eternally cold, and the high hopes flattened beyond all possible recognition, there yet remained to him something passing the love of women.

For Reggie was not without an altar and a secret shrine, though not even the figure of the woman he loved best would ever fill it. The sacred fire of his devotion burned with a steady flame that illumined his whole life, though not even to himself did he confess the vows he paid.

"One must choose one's own mystery: the great thing is to have one." And if prayer be the daily expression to the soul of the desire to do the right thing, then Reggie prayed without ceasing that he might do his WORK, and do it well. His profession was his God, and he served faithfully and with a single heart.

* * * * * *

Mary had no fire to sit over, but all the same she dawdled throughout her undressing and, unlike Reggie, wasted the precious electric light. She had a great deal to think about, for Grantly and Reggie were not the only people to confide in Mary that holiday. The day before he left, General Grantly had taken her for a walk, sworn her to secrecy, and then had sprung upon her a most astounding project. No other than that he and Mrs Grantly should take her mother with them when they went to the South of France for March—their mother without any of them.

"She has never had a real holiday by herself since she was married," the General said, "and my idea is that she should come with us directly your father gets back. The boys will be at school—Grantly at the Shop. There will only be the two little ones and your father to consider, and you could look after them. I'd like to take you too, my dear, but I don't fancy your mother could be persuaded to leave your father unless there was someone to see to things for him."

"She'd never leave father alone," Mary said decidedly; "but she might, oh, she might go now I'm really grown up. I should love her to go. Don't you think"—Mary's voice was very wistful—"that she's been looking a little tired lately . . . not quite so beautiful . . . as usual?"

"Ah, you've noticed it too—that settles it—not a word, mind; if it's sprung upon her at a few days' notice it may come off. If she has time to think she'll discover insurmountable difficulties. Strategy, my dear, strategy must be our watchword."

"But father," Mary suggested dubiously, "who's going to manage him?"

"I think," the General said grimly, "I think we may safely leave your father in Grannie's hands. She has undertaken to square him, and, what she undertakes—I have never known her fail to put through."

"It will be most extraordinary to have mother go off for quite a long time by herself," Mary said thoughtfully.

"She won't be by herself, she'll be with her father and mother; has it never occurred to you as possible that sometimes we might like our daughter to ourselves?"

Mary turned an astonished face towards her grandfather, exclaiming emphatically,

"No, Ganpy, it certainly never has . . . before."

CHAPTER XVII

THE RAM-CORPS ANGEL

Grannie was writing letters. Grandfather had gone into London to the War Office, and it was only ten o'clock. Grannie was safe for an hour or two, for she was sending out notices about something, and that always took a long time.

Ger was rather at a loose end, but with the admirable spirit of the adventurous for making the best of things, he decided to go forth and see what he could see. No one was in the hall to question him as he went out, and he made straight for the common, where something exciting was always toward. He had forgotten to put on a coat, and the wind was cold, so he ran along with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His cap was old, his suit, "a descended suit," was old, and his face, though it was still so early in the day, was far from clean.

For once the common was almost deserted; but far away in front of the "Shop" a thin line of khaki proclaimed the fact that some of the cadets were drilling.

Ger loved the Shop. He had been there on several occasions, accompanied by one or other of his grandparents, to see Grantly, and he knew that he must not go in alone, or his brother would, as he put it, "get in a bate." But there could be no objection to his standing at the gate and looking in at the parade ground. He knew the porter, a nice friendly chap who would not drive him away.

He turned off the common into the road that runs up past the Cadet Hospital. He knew the Cadet Hospital, for once he had gone there with Grannie to visit "a kind of cousin" who had broken his collar-bone in the riding-school. As he passed Ger looked in at the open door. A little crowd of rather poor-looking people stood in the entrance, among them a boy about his own age, with a great pad of cotton-wool fastened over his ear by a bandage.

A crowd of any sort had always an irresistible fascination for Ger. He skipped up the path and pushed in among the waiting people to the side of the boy with the tied-up head.

"Got a sore ear?" he murmured sympathetically.

"Wot's it to you wot I got?" was the discouraging reply.

"Well, I'm sorry, you know," said Ger with obvious sincerity.

The boy looked hard at him and grunted.

"What are you here for?" Ger whispered.

"The Myjor, 'e got to syringe it," the boy mumbled, but this time his tone was void of offence.

"Does it hurt?"

"'E don't 'urt, not much, 'e is careful; 'e's downright afraid of urtin' ya'. . . . An' if 'e does 'urt, it's becos 'e can't 'elp it, an' so," here he wagged his head impressively, "ya' just doesn't let on . . . see? Wots the matter wiv you?"

Here was a poser. Yet Ger was consumed by a desire to see this mysterious "myjor" who syringed ears and didn't hurt people. He had fallen upon an adventure, and he was going to see it out.

"I don't know exactly," he whispered mysteriously, "but I've got to see him."

"P'raps they've wrote about ya'," the bandaged boy suggested.

Ger thought this was unlikely, but let the suggestion pass unchallenged. He watched the various people vanish into a room on the right, saw them come out again, heard the invariable "Next please" which heralded the seclusion of a new patient, till everybody had gone and come back and gone forth into the street again save only the bandaged boy and himself.

"You nip in w'en I comes out," the boy said encouragingly, "it's a bit lyte already, but 'e'll see ya' if yer slippy."

It seemed a long time to Ger as he waited. The little crowd of women and children had melted away. Men in blue cotton jackets passed to and fro across the hall, "Sister," in a curious headdress and scarlet cape, looking like a picture by Carpaccio, came out of another room, went up the staircase and vanished from view. No one spoke to him or asked his business, and Ger stood in a dark corner holding his cap in his hands and waiting.

At last the boy came back with a clean bandage and a big new pad of cotton-wool over the syringed ear.

"'Urry up," he whispered as he passed. "I told 'im as there was one more."

Ger hurried.

Once inside that mysterious door he started violently, for a tall figure clad in a long white smock was standing near a sink brushing his nails. He wore a black band round his head, and on his forehead, attached to the band, was a round mirror. The very brightest mirror Ger had ever seen.

So this was the Myjor.

The uniform was quite new to Ger.

The eyes under the mirror were very blue, and for the rest this strangely clad tall man had a brown moustache and a pleasant voice as he turned, and drying his hands the while, said:

"Well, young shaver, what's the matter with you?"

In his eight years Ger had had but few aches and pains save such as followed naturally upon falls or fights, but he knew that if this interview was to be prolonged he must have something, so he hazarded an ailment.

"I've a muzzy feeling in my head sometimes, sir, a sort of ache, not bad, you know."

The Myjor looked very hard at Ger as he spoke—evidently the little boy's voice and accent were in some way unexpected.

He sat down and drew him forward close to his knees. The round mirror on his forehead flashed into Ger's eyes and he winced.

"Headache, eh?" said the Myjor cheerfully. "You don't look as though you ought to get headaches. Can you read?"

"No, sir, that's just what I can't do, and there's awful rows about it. I can't seem to read, I don't want to much, but I do try . . . I do really, but it's so muddly."

"How long have you been learning?"

"Years and years," said Ger mournfully. "They say Kitten 'll read before me, and she's only four."

"Um," said the Myjor, "that will never do. We can't have Kitten stealing a march on us that way. This must be seen into. By the way, what's your name?"

"Gervais Folaire Ffolliot," Ger answered solemnly, as though he were saying his catechism.

"Ffolliot . . . Ffolliot . . . where d'you live?"

"Redmarley . . . it's a long way from here."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"I'm stopping with grannie and grandfather."

"And who is grandfather?"

"General Grantly," Ger answered promptly, smiling broadly. He always felt that his grandfather was a trump card anywhere, but in Woolwich most of all, "and he's got such a lot of medals, teeny ones, you know, like the big ones. I can read them," he added proudly. "I know them all. Grannie taught me."

"But why have you come to me? And why on earth do you come in among the wives and children of the Shop servants?"

"The door was open," Ger explained, "and I talked to the ear boy, and he said you were most awfully gentle and didn't hurt and hated if you had to—so I knew you were kind, and I'm awfully fond of kind people, so I wanted to see you—you're not cross, are you?" he asked anxiously.

"Um," again remarked the Myjor, and stared at Ger thoughtfully. "Well," he said at last, "since you are here, what is it you find so hard about reading?"

"It's so muddly," Ger complained, "nasty little letters and all so much alike."

"Exactly so," said the Myjor.

Then he drew down the blinds.

Ger's heart beat fast. Here was an adventure indeed, and when you were once well in for an adventure all sorts of queer things happened.

Unprecedented things happened to Ger, but he was never very clear afterwards as to what they were. So many things were "done to him" that he became quite confused. Lights flashed into eyes, lights so brilliant that they quite hurt. Curious spectacles with heavy frames and glasses that took in and out were placed upon his nose, and he was only allowed to use one eye at a time, the other being blotted out by a black disk in the spectacles. At last he looked through with both eyes together at letters on a card, letters that were blacker and clearer than any he had ever seen before . . . and the blinds were drawn up.

"Will you please tell me," Ger asked politely, "what is that curious uniform you wear? I don't seem to have seen it before, an' I've seen a great many."

The Myjor laughed. "It's my working kit; don't you like it?"

"Very much," said Ger, "I think you look like an angel."

"Really," said the Myjor. "I haven't met any, so I don't know."

"I haven't exactly met any," said Ger, "but I've seen portraits of two, and . . . I know a lot about them."

"Now, young man, you listen to me," said the Ram-Corps Angel. "Eyes are not my job really, but I'm glad you looked in to see me, for I'll send you to someone who'll put you right and you'll read long before the Kitten. She'll never catch you. Right away you'll go, she won't be in the same field. You'd better go back now, or Mrs Grantly will be wondering where you are—cheer up about that reading."

"Will I?" Ger asked breathlessly. "Shall I be able to get into the
Shop? They pill you for eyes, you know."

"Your eyes will be all right by the time you're ready for the Shop. You see crooked just now, you know—and it wants correcting, that's all."

"What?" cried Ger despairingly. "Do I squint?"

"Bless you, no; the sight of your two eyes is different, that's all—when you get proper glasses you'll be right as rain. Lots of people have it . . . if you'd been a Board School you'd have been seen to long ago," he added, more to himself than to Ger.

Then Ger shook hands with the Ram-Corps Angel and walked rather slowly and thoughtfully across the common to grandfather's house though the wind was colder than ever. He forgot to look in at the Shop gate, but the parade ground was empty. The cadets had finished drilling. Ger had been so long in that darkened room.

He had lunch alone with his grannie, for grandfather was lunching at his club. There was no poking of the Ffolliot children into schoolrooms and nurseries for meals when they stayed with the ganpies. His face was clean and his hair very smooth, and he held back Mrs Granny's chair for her just as grandfather did. She stooped and kissed the fresh, friendly little face and told him he was a dear, which was most pleasant.

He was hungry and the roast mutton was very good, moreover he was going to the Zoo that afternoon directly after lunch, grannie's French maid was to take him. They were to have a taxi from Charing Cross, and lunch passed pleasantly, enlivened by the discussion of this enchanting plan.

Presently he asked, apropos of nothing: "Do all the Ram-Corps officers look like angels?"

"Like angels!" Mrs Grantly repeated derisively. "Good gracious, no!
Very plain indeed, some of them I've seen."

"The one at the Cadet Hospital does," Ger said positively, "like a great big angel and a dear."

"Who? Major Murray?" Mrs Grantly inquired, looking puzzled; "where have you seen him?"

But at this very moment someone came to tell Ger it was time to get ready, and in the fuss and excitement of seeing him off, his grannie forgot all about the Ram Corps and its angelic attributes.

It was her day. Guest after guest arrived, and she was pretty tired by the time she had given tea to some five and twenty people.

The General never came in at all till the last guest had gone. Then he sought his wife, and standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire he told her that Major Murray had been to see him, and had recounted Ger's visit of the morning, and the result of his investigations.

Mrs Grantly, which was unusual, never interrupted once.

"So you can understand," the General concluded, "I didn't feel like facing a lot of people."

"I shall write at once to Margie," Mrs Grantly cried breathlessly, "and tell her she is a fool."

"I wouldn't do that," the General said gently; "poor Margie, she has a good deal on her shoulders."

"All the same—do you remember that that unfortunate child has been punished—punished because he was considered idle and obstinate over his lessons . . . punished . . . little Ger—friendly, jolly little Ger . . . I can't bear it," and Mrs Grantly burst into tears.

The General looked very much as though he would like to cry too. "It's an unfortunate business," he said huskily, "but you see, none of us have ever had any eye trouble, and the other children have all such good sight . . . it never occurred to me . . . I must confess . . . of course it can be put right very easily; you're to take him to the oculist to-morrow; I've telephoned and made the appointment."

Mrs Grantly dried her eyes.

"We're all to blame," she exclaimed, "I'm just as much to blame as
Margie . . . she'll be fearfully upset I don't know how to tell her."

"Tell you what," exclaimed the General, "I'll write to Ffolliot . . . I'll do it now, this instant, and the letter will catch the 7.30 post . . ."

At the door he paused and added more cheerfully, "I shall enjoy writing to Ffolliot."