He was at Aldershot with the Officers' Training Corps of his school on that Fourth of August on which the world looked in the face of the fact that Great Britain had declared war against Germany.

One never knows one has been living through happy days until they have gone. Then, looking back, one sees that the way of life that one had thought quite grey and ordinary was all aglow with heavenly light.

A good many things had happened since the night when the Boy and I had patched up the little trouble between us over his telegram. And one of these things was that he had finished his last term at his school in a blaze of honours.

He had been, perhaps, rather too brilliant a meteor there, so that the sky was likely to seem grey after he had vanished from it. He had won a scholarship for a great Oxford college, and he looked into a future so gloriously golden that he himself had almost turned his eyes from it, dazzled and half afraid.

Some months before this he had brought home once on a week's visit one of his two best friends, a very tall and straight and serious boy called Edward Brennan. My first ideas of Edward were that he did not greatly care for womankind and that, considering that he was so young, he had an astonishing worship of the music of Beethoven.

"I can't understand it," I had said to him once. "Oh, of course I recognise that Beethoven is very great, and all that, and I like his music about twice a year when I feel ecclesiastical; but on the whole he always strikes me as a composer who was born an old man and who made music for old men."

"Why, mother always worships old men!" put in Little Yeogh Wough mischievously.

"Yes, but not as musical composers," I retorted. "You see, I've got a mind that always has what you may call the apple-blossom feeling in it, and anything fusty always repels me. I would run miles bare-foot to avoid seeing Stonehenge or any ruins. It's good that those things should be in the world in order to give the dry-as-dust people something to do to write about them; but in general I agree with Emerson that it's not the business of the rose that blooms to-day to worry itself into wrinkles about the roses that bloomed even yesterday—much less two thousand years ago."

And then the rather cold Edward had quite warmed up and had done a thing that I liked. He had actually had the boldness to hold back my arm when I was putting a modern French serenade record on the gramophone, and insist on substituting for it a part of "Leonora."

"All right, Edward. I'll make a bargain with you. If you'll try to talk French a little every day and to read George Meredith, I'll try to like Beethoven."

But the most important fact about Edward, so far as I personally was concerned, was one which I did not take properly into account till afterwards. And that was the fact that he had a sister.

I had heard that he had one, of course. I knew that already, before Roland went to Edward's people on a visit. But then—so many boys have sisters!

My first suspicions had been aroused when the Boy had come back, and began writing letters.

It seems a funny thing to say, but I can always tell what is in people's minds when I see them write letters.

To begin with, I never feel quite comfortable when people are writing letters in the same room with me. Of course, this is really laughably childish and quite unjustifiable, but I am not by any means the only person who has the feeling. There are some people who have to get up and go out of rooms where their relatives are writing letters, lest they should deal them mortal blows over the head.

This doesn't apply to offices, of course, or to people who write business letters. I myself feel quite unperturbed when a business letter is getting written; and I always know that it's a business letter, though a guest in our house may be writing it at the opposite end of the room to where I am sitting. There is something in the air of the writer which seems to say: "I'm only writing this because I've got to. I wouldn't do it else."

But when a lot of ordinary persons sit down to write futile screeds that are not wanted, to other ordinary people who, in nine cases out of ten, couldn't tell you if they tried how the postal system is worked, they do it with an air of defiant importance which says as plainly as possible:

"Of course, you think you're the only person in the world whose correspondence matters. But you're quite mistaken. We have friends, too—most valuable friends—who absolutely insist on getting letters from us as frequently as possible. Miss Violet Smithers wrote to me yesterday—we were at a boarding-school together in Lower Norwood for three years—and I must answer her to-day. I can't help it if you want the only stamp in the house for a legal document which will become invalid if not sent to-day, and every post office within ten miles is shut under some new closing regulation. Miss Violet Smithers must have her letter."

I knew an old gentleman once who went absolutely off his head because of the immense volume of his servants' correspondence. He danced with fury on his gouty feet when he met his domestics "just going to the post, sir," and in the end he announced to me his intention of retiring to a cottage where only one servant would be necessary and he was going to advertise for her, offering fancy wages if she answered the following description:

"Orphan who has lost both parents; absolutely friendless; no sweetheart and totally unable either to read or to write."

I never knew whether he found his treasure or not.

After which, I will go back to Little Yeogh Wough and to the fact that when I saw him spending two or three hours sitting quite still at a table with his fine shoulders and his lion-cub head bent over a lengthy epistle, I began to think that there must be something a little wrong somewhere.

And when he followed this up by spending an entire morning, from breakfast to luncheon, making up one small parcel, my doubts became certainties.

"Is that parcel intended for the King or Queen, Roland?" I asked him when he had finished and had carefully conveyed the package away to his own room, in order, I guessed, that nobody might see the address on it.

He looked at me and laughed.

"What do you mean, Big Yeogh Wough?"

"Why, you've sent out for some new brown paper because all the pieces in the house are crumpled, and you've been most particular about getting a smooth piece of string without any knots in it, and I heard you remarking to your sister that it is a pity that labels are not made more artistic."

He laughed again, but said nothing more. And I did not say anything more, either. I waited until his second friend, whom he called "The Father Confessor," came down to us on a visit in the house on the East Coast, and I put a few discreet questions to him as we sat together talking on the Chesterfield in the dining-room, late at night.

"I was so sorry that we could not get to the last Speech Day, Victor. It was lawyers' business that kept me away. Nothing else should have done so. I simply could not go that day, nor Roland's father either. I am afraid Roland was very much disappointed. He seemed to hold on to our being there this last time."

"Yes. He did hold on to it, I know. He'd been wanting you to come particularly. It was such a triumph for him! And he'd deserved it, too. He'd gone without sleep for three or four nights a week to get those prizes and those honours."

"Had he?"

"Yes. Of course, even a wonderful fellow like Roland can't do everything, and what with his school prÆpositorship and his school magazine work and his debating and his looking after the house and his cooking and his running everything and everybody he ever came across, he hadn't time in the hours of the day to win examinations. So he used to go to bed at eleven and then be down in his study again on the quiet at one o'clock and work from then till the ordinary time to get up."

I caught my breath. Oh, my Little Yeogh Wough! It was reckless and dangerous, but it was just what I should have expected of you. You're not the boy to look at the clock to see if he's worked long enough and leave a precious job unfinished because the hour for "Down tools!" has struck.

But I returned to the business I had in hand.

"Of course, we knew that Roland wouldn't be lonely, even though we couldn't get down for that day," I went on. "He had so many friends there."

"Oh, no, he wasn't lonely! He was with Edward and his people most of the day."

"Oh, yes, of course! Was Edward's father there?"

"No, not his father. His mother and sister came. I don't think they'd meant to come, only they wanted to see you."

I laughed. "I remember, Roland told me they wanted to see me. I am sure I don't know why. Is Edward's sister like Edward—very tall and straight and rather formal?"

"Oh, no! She's not a bit like Edward. She's not like anybody else that ever I knew. She's quite little and very clever. I dare say you'd like her awfully."

I laughed again.

"You are funny, Victor. You're quite undoing my ideas of Edward's sister. Does she wear long-bodied blouses, with very high necks—at the back, anyhow—bought ready made from the drapers that advertise in the daily papers?"

He looked puzzled. I went on:

"Does she wear a wrist watch and keep on jerking her arm up at an angle to see the time by it? Does she have little bits of tulle bows tied under her ears and little frills and odds and ends of ribbon wherever they can be put, and a very ornamental waist-belt, and a general look as if her highest idea of good style were to sit in the dress circle of a theatre at a matinÉe?"

Poor Victor! It was no wonder that he looked at me in more and more perplexity. Yet he did grasp something of what I meant, for he answered gravely:

"I don't think she's that sort, a bit. She had a very pretty dress on on Speech Day, and I think it was quite a Frenchy sort—the kind of thing that Roland likes. And she doesn't wear bits of tulle and frills. She's quite plain about the neck."

"Then she must be good-looking!" I exclaimed. And I added to myself: "She must be a girl of fascination—a girl to be reckoned with!—and not a mere stick to hang drapers' advertised wares upon."

The next day The Bystander slipped close to my side in the garden and said:

"Mother, I've found out what book it is that Roland has sent to Edward's sister. You see, the people in the shop where he got it asked me just now if I thought he wanted to pay for it separately or if they should put it down on the account. It's 'The Story of an African Farm.'"

I had a feeling as if something were clutching at my heart. I said a few words in answer and then I went to the back drive and walked up and down there by myself.

I was glad Little Yeogh Wough was out. I wanted to be apart from him and to think.

"If he has sent Vera Brennan 'The Story of an African Farm,' then she can't be the ordinary sort of girl," I thought. "She can't be of the great army of those who play games and are always taking bodily exercise, yet never by any chance do anything more useful than arrange cut flowers. He could have passed on his way among thousands of these without taking any notice of them. She must be a personality—one of the few girls who can think and are not afraid to do it; one of the few who know what real romance is and who, because they know this, will always be able to marry as often as they like, no matter how small the number of marriageable men may be, while other women stand around and gasp for a husband in vain. And if she is this—then he is not wholly and only mine now as he was a few weeks ago. He will never be wholly mine any more."

"So we are in it. We are in the European Soup," I wrote to Little Yeogh Wough in his Officers' Training Corps camp at Aldershot, when war had been declared.

But he was beside me before my letter could have reached him.

"The War Office broke us up," he explained. "There was no room there any more for boys who were only playing at soldiering. But I'm going to do the real thing. I'm going to set about it to-morrow."

"Yes," I told him, "you must go. It is the right thing for you to do."

He looked at his father and heard from him again the same words, more emphatically repeated: "Yes. It's the right thing for you to do."

He was very silent that evening, but it was very gaily and proudly that he set out next morning to fling himself into the sudden feverish activity of a certain garrison town not far away.

"He won't be long getting his commission," his father said. "His five years in the Officers' Training Corps have taught him his work already."

But at the end of that day, and at the end of many another day that followed, the Boy came back with a wistful disappointment written upon his handsome face.

He always had the same story to tell—a story of having been welcomed and encouraged when he had first presented himself and promised all that his heart desired, so that only he passed the doctor's requirements.

He had laughed at first at the bare idea of meeting with any difficulty in connection with the doctor. Those who had made him the promises had been quite confident, too, on this point. What could there be wrong with a splendid physique such as his?

"And then I failed in the eyesight test," he finished up. "It is ridiculous, of course, that they should reject me for so little, because I don't have to wear glasses now for anything, and no ordinary person would know there was anything wrong with my eyes at all. I wonder if this sort of thing is going to keep on repeating itself? One or two of the officers suggested another doctor, but I suppose that as long as that wretched test board is put up and they find I can't read the small type on it at a given distance, one doctor will be the same as another."

He was walking up and down the room restlessly. His fine dark eyes—so much too beautiful to have an eagle's sight—were sadder than ever in their wistful mortification.

"You poor boy! You've always had everything so much your own way in life that you can't understand being beaten back anywhere. But, you know, you always say that you've never got anything important yet the very first time you've tried for it."

"Oh, but this is different! And if I can't get into the Army, what am I going to do? I can't go to Oxford. There'll be nobody there except cripples. I should feel it a disgrace to be seen there. Just fancy my walking about there, looking as fit as I do, when every other decent fellow is fighting! What do you think people would think of me—yes, and even say to me? Nobody would ever believe I've got anything the matter with me, eyes or anything else, unless I wore a label round my neck. Oh, Big Yeogh Wough, what am I going to do? You've no idea what it felt like to-day to have to go out from among them—those officers who'd been quite eager to have me with them."

He flung himself down heavily into a chair. He had not yet taken off his overcoat and I could see that he was very tired. I bent over him and kissed him.

"You dear big boy! I suppose it's just because of your strength that you're always so piteous when anything doesn't go quite right with you. You can always move mountains yourself and so it breaks you down to find a mountain in your path that you haven't the right to try to move. Never mind. Things will work themselves out all right."

"And to think that Edward has been passed!" he burst out. "He's sure of his commission now. He's only got to wait for it. And I——! Look here, I'll go and have another try to-morrow at a different place and if I'm rejected again I'll go over and join the French army."

"Better offer to help Colonel Crompton here with the recruiting," put in his father, quietly. "You'd be wearing your O.T.C. uniform and doing useful work and through it you might get your chance."

It was a good idea, and the Boy saw it.

"Yes, I think I'll do that. I'll have a try at Bury St. Edmunds to-morrow, and if the doctor there doesn't slip me through the eyesight test I'll go round and help the dear old colonel and work my way in sideways. After all, if I'm a good soldier and strong and healthy, what on earth does it matter that I can't see the enemy coming behind bushes five miles off? When it comes to that, one uses field glasses."

"That's the right way to look at it," I told him. "The bright side of everything is really the truest side. That's why I'm sorry Miss Torry isn't here now. She'd only have to cry out: 'Lor'! You've only got to try twenty-three and three-quarter times more and you're sure to get what you want.' That irrepressible sort of person is so helpful in life—so different from Old Nurse's sort. Old Nurse would have said to you: 'Well, Master Roland, I don't see how you can expect them to take you, seein' as I've always told you as you've got an 'undredth part of an inch more toe-nail on your right big toe than on your left.'"

The reference to toe-nails must have made him glance at my feet, for his face suddenly brightened as he said:

"Oh, you've got my scarlet silk stockings on—the pair I gave you for a birthday present when I was ten years old! They do look lovely. I'm so glad you've put them on. Only just seeing them has taken all my tiredness and bitterness away. They make life worth living again."

"You funny boy! How many people, do you think, would know what you mean by that?"

"Not many, I dare say, but that's their fault, not mine. I always feel so sorry for them—for the people who can't understand why the sight of such things as scarlet silk stockings, and Parma violets, and black fox fur, and blue hyacinths, and pink carnations, helps one to live."

"Sulphur carnations," I put in. "Sulphur yellow is the adored colour of my womanhood, just as salmon pink was the adored colour of my childhood. For years of my little girlhood I spent all my pocket money on either salmon-pink ribbon or white narcissi. I would have gone without food or clothes to get either of these things. Of course, I shouldn't say this if anybody were here but ourselves. The servants would think me mad if they heard me—just as they would think you either mad, or bad, or both, for your joy in my scarlet silk stockings. I remember Old Nurse's amazement when you bought them for me. She would have thought it more natural for you to have bought me a satchel or a bottle of cheap lavender water or something else quite ordinary and respectable.... But, anyhow, I'm afraid the time for beautiful things is over for two or three years. The war is going to grind us down very low before it's done with."

He was so much brightened up that his failure to pass the eyesight test again next day did not dismay him in the least. He offered his help to the lovable colonel who was the recruiting officer for the district and who was sorely overworked already, and was soon throwing his whole heart into the business of bundling into His Majesty's Forces as many young men as he could get hold of.

He began with our cook, who had always had a weakness for him.

"Joanna, your young man ought to enlist. He's such a splendid fellow. The Army can't do without him."

"Oh, Master Roland!"

She began a string of objections and excuses. But Little Yeogh Wough got his way, as he always did when there was no red tape to come up against.

"You seem to have quite forgotten that you want a commission for yourself, Roland," I said to him after he had done a fortnight of indefatigable recruiting work.

"Oh, no, I haven't. But I've found out that the best way to get the thing you want is to work hard at something else, and then the other thing falls into your lap. There was a Lord Chief Justice once—I forget which one—who, when he was a boy, drove his father to despair because he wouldn't study law but would go on the stage. But he ended up as Lord Chief Justice a good deal quicker than if he had taken to the law at first. I'm going to do that with my soldiering. I've got an idea. You wait a bit. I'm going down to Doctor S—— to ask him to give me a certificate of physical fitness. I shan't say a word about eyesight, and he won't think of it. He's never heard a whisper of there being anything wrong with mine. But he does know that I'm as tough as a young horse, and he'll be glad enough to write down that he knows it."

Armed with this document, which was given him in all good faith, he went to yet another garrison town, where he had come to know a major who was going to be put in command of a new battalion. This major had taken a great fancy to him; and the result was that one evening Little Yeogh Wough came home and announced that at last he had got his heart's desire.

"It's a certainty, Big Yeogh Wough. It can't go wrong now. It was that certificate that did it. They never put me through any eyesight test at all. Now I can look Edward Brennan in the face. Let us have him here for a week."

I told him how glad I was. And it was true that I was glad, for his whole look had changed.

But deep down in my heart I felt as if an iron hand were clutching at me.

"Once I get the commission, I'll soon manage to get out to the Front," he laughed confidently.

"Yes," I said, and laughed too. But the iron clutch at my heart came again.

"I must see about my outfit at once. And then I shall have to go into rooms at Norwich to be with my battalion. I shall have to change out of it later on if I find it's only going to be a Home Service one."

Even with all his energy about his outfit, his name was in the gazette before his new uniform was ready. Yet it was not long before a Sunday morning came when he made his first public appearance in the neighbourhood as a second lieutenant, going to church with his sister to show how the best quality cloth, the best cut, the best shade of khaki, the best Sam Browne belt and all the other accessories could increase the attractiveness of a boy with a fine figure and with that "dignity of the watch-chain" sort of fascination about him which I have tried to explain already.

"I don't agree with the people who say that khaki is not becoming," I said to his father after he had gone. "It must be becoming, because, since the war broke out, I've had a stronger and stronger impression every day that England is full of good-looking men."

"I must see what Edward Brennan looks like in his khaki," I thought.

But Edward was still waiting for his commission and so was in his ordinary clothes. But the thrill of the war was in him and it was a new Edward who was with us now and sat at the piano, and with his long fingers brought from the keys music that had a strange new meaning in it.

"Edward, in a way I am sorry that you are going soldiering, too. It will be a great pity if anything happens to you—because, if you live, you'll be a great musician one day, when you wake up."

"When I wake up?"

"Yes. You're as cold as marble now. You want to thaw. But you're beginning to thaw already. What is that sad, sweet thing you've been playing over and over again this morning?"

"Oh, don't you know? It's my setting of Roland's poem, 'L'Envoi.'"

"Roland's poem? I didn't know he wrote any poems."

"No. He's afraid to show them to you, because he says they're not good enough yet. But I liked this one so much that I couldn't help setting it to music."

And he played the music over again, singing the words as he did so:

When he had finished I had a lump in my throat and a mist before my eyes, so that I could hardly see him as he sat at the piano.

A few minutes later I thought I heard Little Yeogh Wough come in. I went to his room, but he was not there. There was a sheet from an exercise book on the floor, which the wind that came in at the open window had evidently blown off the table. I picked it up and looked at it, and saw that the writing on it was a poem which the Boy had copied from a recent number of the "Westminster Gazette."

I read the lines through carelessly at first; but when I came to the third or fourth line I knew that if he was to get out to the Front and get killed this poem would haunt me always. I found myself murmuring the words over:

Another blinding mist of tears blotted out the last line, even as just now in the drawing-room tears had blotted out the figure of Little Yeogh Wough's friend sitting at the piano.

That night, after midnight, as I sat on the big sofa with the Boy and his friend, I said suddenly:

"I didn't know you wrote poems, Roland. Why don't you let me see some of them?"

"They're not good enough to show you. I suppose Edward has been telling you I've written them. He oughtn't to have told you."

They were sitting one on either side of me. Edward laughed.

"Don't mind what he says. I'll send them to you to read," he said to me.

Then a demon of anger leapt up in the eyes of Little Yeogh Wough. He looked dangerous as he flung himself across me and defied his friend.

"No, you won't send them. I don't mean mother to see them. They're not good enough. They're not to be shown her. You understand?"

"Roland!" I exclaimed reproachfully.

When his friend had gone to bed he walked fiercely up and down the room in which he was now alone with me.

"You can see what I feel, Big Yeogh Wough. I don't want you to see work that I think is bad. And you know that home and you are something quite apart from everything else with me. My best self is always here, but I've had to bring out another self in my school life, or I couldn't have got on in that life at all. And I don't want you to hear about that other self. Any boy that comes here must come on condition that he doesn't tell you."

"You ought to be very grateful to this particular boy who is here now, for he has told me of all sorts of goodnesses in you—of your kindness in helping other fellows less clever than yourself—helping them even to compete against you—and of your great sense of justice. You have learnt to rule, and I am glad, for now you will have to put your ability to the test; and I am very proud to know that last Speech Day the Head thanked you for the change for the better that you had worked in your house since you had been an important boy there."

He came and sat down on the big couch beside me and leaned his head against mine.

"Are you particularly fond of Edward's sister, Roland?"

"Of Vera Brennan? No, not particularly fond of her. I like her tremendously. You would, too, if you knew her. She's not like other girls. She's brilliant and can think for herself. She wants to be a writer some day. But first she's going to Oxford. If it hadn't been for this war we should have been there at the same time."

"Going to Oxford isn't the way for a woman to be a writer—except of treatises. But that's beside the point. Are you getting to be fond of her? Do you think you will ever be as fond of her as you are of me?"

"What are you talking about, Big Yeogh Wough? I'm only a boy yet and am not likely to get fond of any woman, except in a comradely way. You know that when the time comes for me to love a woman and think of marrying her, I should like to find one like you if I could. But I'm not likely to be able to do that. Yet, whether the woman be Vera or anybody else, there won't be any question of whether I love you or her the better. You and I have lived so much in each other's life that we're like one person, and the woman I love will have to have you for a lover as well as me, while she'll have to love you if she wants me."

"Does Vera Brennan know that I call you Little Yeogh Wough and that you call me Big Yeogh Wough?"

"No. She knows a lot about me, but she doesn't know things like that."

"That's right. And now it's time you went to bed, or you will make me so very late in coming to say good night to you."

"All right." He got up at once. "But you're not going to sit up working, are you? I don't think you ought to in this East Coast house. What's the good of their putting out the lighthouse light if you keep the light in your turret blazing away? You see, we're as nearly opposite Germany as we can be."

"Very well. I'll be good and go to bed by a candle hidden away behind a curtain. It will be all the better for your father. There won't be any fear of the light waking him up. He says he would have been in his grave long ago if he kept the hours I keep. That may be, but I never find that the people who go to bed at nine and get up at half-past eight are any the healthier for it. I rather agree with that old financier who used to see a good deal of us and used to say sometimes in the morning: 'I feel quite out of sorts to-day. I always do whenever I go to bed earlier than usual.'"

I went to his room half an hour later to say good night to him. He was already in bed. Before I switched off his light I saw something in his eyes which made me say:

"Roland, what are you thinking of? Is this the last time I shall come and say good night to you before you go out to the Front—if you succeed in getting out there?"

"Yes." He answered me in a very tender voice which no one else knew. "You see, if you come up with me to London to-morrow we shall be sleeping in different places—you at the hotel and I at Uncle Jack's—and after that I shall be going straight to my rooms at Norwich. And even if my battalion gets accidentally ordered to this town, I shall have to sleep at headquarters. This place would be too far off. And I don't suppose there'll be much leave going, because the battalion is so raw and wants such a lot of training."

"What a splendid thing your five years' O.T.C. training has been for you!"

"Yes. The O.T.C. major has written to the commanding officer of my battalion and told him what he thinks of me as a trained soldier already, and it seems to have been a pretty good opinion, so I don't expect I shall be long getting out to the Front. I don't mean to be long. I'll move heaven and earth to get out there. I know you won't try to keep me back. You know, you said to me once, not very long ago, that every man has two mothers, his flesh-and-blood mother and his country, and he owes as much to the one as to the other. That's what makes that American song: 'I didn't raise my son to be a soldier,' all wrong."

I had knelt down by his bedside again and was smoothing the mass of his hair. We were silent for a long while and then I suddenly found myself saying:

"I wonder if a mother's love is really all gold, as people say it is, Little Yeogh Wough, or whether there isn't a good deal of the dross of pride in it! Now, I would take off my skin and sit in my bones to keep you from feeling cold, but, after all, that's because you are mine, and I suppose I am selfish enough to think, though it's wrong to do so, that what is mine is more precious than what is anybody else's. Of course, if much of this pride comes in, it takes the holiness away from the love."

"I don't think you need trouble about that, when it's a question of you and me," he returned.

I was still stroking his hair. And then something, though I could not have told what, made me whisper to him:

"Say: 'Our Father, Which art in Heaven,' with me, Little Yeogh Wough."

I did not know then what he felt lately about these things. So much had happened that might have changed him since I had caught a glimpse of the ivory crucifix half hidden under other things in his drawer.

But, with his lips close to my face, he repeated the prayer with me.

I had left him about half an hour when a loud knocking came at the front door. Without disturbing my husband I slipped some clothes on and went downstairs, but could find no trace of either Little Yeogh Wough or Edward.

Presently they both came in, in dressing-gowns and bedroom slippers, and I learned that they had been guiding down to the sea some coast patrols, new-comers to the locality, who had lost their way.

"What? Do you mean that you have been all the way down to the sea on this bitterly cold and stormy night with nothing on but dressing-gowns over your pyjamas and bedroom slippers on your bare feet?"

They laughed, and then I knew that nothing would hold either of them back from the Front five minutes longer than was absolutely inevitable.

But the next day was a different kind of day for Little Yeogh Wough. For he spent it in London—that London which he always loved, as I love it, with a deep and undying devotion; and he found himself in the company of men whose strength was in their brains, rather than in their bodies.

He began, directly I left him, by mischievously telegraphing to an eminent novelist, who was fond of him, to meet him at a given spot in town. It was the eminent novelist's busiest day of the week, on which he never left home, but he obeyed the summons of the telegram, which bore the sender's surname only, imagining, perhaps, that something had gone very wrong. Anyhow, he was irate when he discovered that nothing more important had required him than Little Yeogh Wough, desirous of showing off his uniform.

He gave his admiration, none the less. Another and another, whom the boy of my heart went to see, charmed him by their brilliance in return for the quicker life which the mere sight and voice of him put into their veins. He passed the afternoon at the Stores, doing as much in helping the sale of military outfits for other people as in buying what he himself needed. And he passed the evening with me at my hotel, with friends of whom one, Mr. Clement Shorter, had known him by daily sight and greeting since the bright years of his earliest boyhood.

He sat and drank in the eager talk of books. And at twelve o'clock, when the never to be forgotten little party had broken up and he was due at his uncle's flat, he came and planted himself in front of me and said:

"Big Yeogh Wough, when this war is over, I'm not going in for the Indian Civil Service. I'm not going in for anything that will take me away from London and you and the life that you live. London and the brain force of London have got into my blood to-day. When I come back I'm going to stop here and use here in this city all the powers that I've got. You will see."

When he was leaving me he turned back and said with sudden wistfulness:

"I've got to go down to-morrow, but you could stop in London till Friday, couldn't you? You see, Edward's going to bring his sister up to town on Friday and I should like you to meet her. I dare say I could get up again for a few hours and we might have a little tea-party somewhere—perhaps at the Criterion."

He spoke quite lightly, as if my refusal would not matter in the very least. But I looked at his sad, deep eyes and at the grace of his figure in its new khaki, and I did not refuse.

"Very well," I agreed. "I will stay over until Friday. I am really quite curious to see this Vera Brennan who is so utterly unlike all other girls."

"That's good of you. It's settled, then. I'll manage to come up."

And so it came about that a quarter-past four on the next Friday afternoon found me in the vestibule of the Criterion, looking at the moving throngs of men, nearly all in khaki, and of women who were already for the most part in black. And I wondered again, as I have wondered all my life, why these so-called bright scenes are sadder far than any funeral, and why black does succeed in looking pathetic on the young, whereas it only looks dismal on the old.

It is only a mild sympathy that stirs in one when one sees a very old woman in widow's crape. One feels that the fitness of things is not outraged. But when one sees a young widow—oh, then, one knows that there is a story of romance and horror and anguish lurking behind the black, and first a pang of pity goes through one's heart, and then a flood of tenderness rises in one's soul for the girl who could only just have gained her womanhood's best joys when she lost them.

Little Yeogh Wough, who had been shopping for himself, was by this time crossing the floor towards me, his face aglow, his step strong, his whole air vital and electric. At the same moment little Miss Torry, whom I had notified of our intention to be here, appeared like a small whirlwind and grasped first my hand and then the Boy's, as if she meant to wrench them from our wrists and carry them away with her as trophies.

"Oh, you dear boy! Let me look at you. What a size you are! And how the khaki does suit you! And what a lovely shade of khaki it is—a greeny shade! Some people do have such horrid, mustardy things. Oh, dear me! I wish there weren't so many people here, so that I could get a better look at you. I shall hug you in a minute before everybody—and then, what will people say? And your moustache, too! Why, it's quite golden! and I always did expect it to come out black and make you look like a conspirator."

She was so very tiny and the boy was, in comparison, so very big that it was amusing to see them together. But there was a great softness in his eyes as he looked at her, for he had had Miss Torry guiding him in the way he should go for nearly thirteen years of his life, and every scolding she'd given him, and every extra extravagance she had denied him when he had been at school had endeared her to him unutterably.

And then there entered the girl whom I had come to meet—the girl to whom he had sent letters that had taken hours to write, and a parcel containing one book which had required a whole morning for its making-up and addressing.

I saw someone very small, very slight, very delicate-faced and yet very resolute, with amethyst-like eyes that looked straight into my eyes, asking me mute questions concerning the soul of the boy who had been mine only till now, but was not likely to be mine only for ever.

She was accompanied by an aunt, and the little tea-party went off very successfully, with Little Yeogh Wough glowing with pride and happiness, and his sister, who had come with me, taking things all in, as she always did. Not one of us breathed a word as to what we had really come there for—namely, to examine each other and see how we liked each other; but the verdict was an all-round satisfactory one, and in the end we all got into a taxicab together and Miss Vera Brennan sat on my knee.

"How tiny you are!" I said playfully.

"Yes. I was saying to Roland once how sorry I am that I'm so small, and he said he liked small women."

She was going to buy a hat, and I set her and her aunt down at the hat shop. Little Yeogh Wough went with them to help her in making her choice—or, rather, to show her how well he could choose a hat for her even this first time.

I did not watch him go into the shop, because at that moment there came along a marching phalanx of new recruits, most of whom had not yet got their uniforms; men of London, who had given themselves up to strive and suffer for their country and who came along without panoply or music, and with no need of either because of the music that was in their hearts, and that made their eyes glow and their steps ring firm and true.

If I had been a man I should have bared my head to them as they passed. I honoured them, I reverenced them, I loved them, with an honour and a reverence and a love that half choked me.

That evening, when Little Yeogh Wough came back to me at the hotel, he asked me in a quite careless tone how I liked Miss Brennan.

"Oh, I like her very much!" I answered him. "She is good-looking and sincere—and good looks and sincerity go a very long way. I hope you let her know that it was I who had trained you to be a good judge of hats and of most other articles of the feminine wardrobe?"

"Oh, of course I've told her all about that!" he said with a laugh.

He had worn khaki five months and a half, and had worked hard, and become a full lieutenant and been entrusted at nineteen with difficult Home Service jobs that would not have been given to many a man of thirty, when one day he came to us in the East Coast house with such a glow on his face as I had never seen there before.

"I believe I am going to get out to the Front at last," he announced. "Lady Geraldine Desmer and Captain Jarvice both know influential people at the War Office, and it will be very surprising if between them I don't get what I want. Captain Jarvice is going to take me up to the War Office with him to-morrow. He says he isn't going to wait about here in England much longer, and at the same time he's promised me that he won't go unless I go with him. And he really does seem to have influence, so I believe I'm all right now. Besides, Gretton's got out there, so I'm bound to go. There's a fate in it."

So, two days later, the brave young feet ran up the steps of the house eagerly again, and the fine young figure met me in the hall with a leaner figure beside it.

He waited for Captain Jarvice to tell me what there was to tell. And that charming cavalry officer did tell me, while he held out both his hands to me, looking at me with eyes that had a mist of moisture in them.

"I've got them to take him. We're both going out with the 7th Melchesters in five days' time. I've been wondering whether you'll bless me for this or curse me."

"Roland, go and tell your father."

When they had gone, an hour later, his father and I and his sister sat and looked at each other and were very silent.

The next day the Boy came again, this time bringing his luggage—all the extra things which he had had in his Norwich rooms and could not take to the Front. There were things to be locked in his trunks and things to be packed on his wardrobe shelves, and certain especially precious treasures which he poured in a heap into his private drawer in that same capacious piece of furniture.

"I've lost the key of this drawer, so I can't lock it separately from the whole wardrobe, but you'll see that nobody goes to it, won't you, Big Yeogh Wough?" he said wistfully as he pressed down a few unimportant articles of clothing on the top of the little piles of letters and notebooks which he had just heaped up.

"Yes," I promised him. "I shall not go to it and your father will not, and Clare will not. And there's no one else."

I was tenderly wrapping up his sword in folds of silk as I spoke; his sword, that had been used for show and was not wanted for the hard and bitter work of fighting in earnest.

He went on talking as he went on packing in things on the top of the letters:

"I've told Vera Brennan that you won't mind her writing to you sometimes. You won't, will you?"

"No. Of course I shan't mind. I shall be glad."

I felt suddenly grateful to fate for the other woman who loved him, too.

He finished his packing and we went into the dining-room for tea.

"I shan't be able to stay all through tea. I've got to leave in ten minutes, to catch the train back to Norwich and clear out of my rooms there, so as to go to the Melchesters at Maldon. I shall feel a stranger among them, and no mistake. But I like the colonel, and that's something."

He spoke quite bravely and with an attempt at his usual gaiety, but it was easy to see that there was something not quite right about him. Eagerly though he had striven to go, he yet was not going without a pang.

But it was not the coward's pang—Heaven be thanked! There was nothing of fear in it.

Downstairs in the kitchen department of the house there was a great and unwonted silence that made itself felt even in our rooms. The servants knew and were sorry. One of them had known him for eight years, another for four and yet another for two; and their unnatural silence and stillness had a meaning which struck a chill to my heart.

Then, the ten minutes being over, he got up and kissed us good-bye all round. A curious look came on his face as he saw the tears in his father's eyes brim over. He went out very suddenly, walking a little blindly.

He would have no one go to the station with him. For one thing, he was not going there immediately, and, secondly, he always hated being seen off by anyone that he loved.

And six days later, at eight o'clock in the morning, a telegram came to us, sent by him from Folkestone:

"Am crossing to-night."

As I have said before, I buried my face in the pillow and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

For it is in the beginning that the great Fear comes and grips and chills.

I was glad Old Nurse was dead, and also Tita, the black Skye terrier. The dog had loved him so! She had always been haggard and wretched when she had seen his luggage packed for going back to school at the beginning of each term, and now she would surely have known somehow that he had gone to the war.

"Oh, Little Yeogh Wough!" I cried out in my heart. "I have guarded you so much always—so much!—and now I can't guard you any more. Now already your glad young feet are marching over French ground, carrying you on—on—perhaps to your death."

And then began for us all a different life; a life of heart hunger. We hungered to hear the Boy's laugh, to hear the peculiar call he gave when he wanted his younger brother to help him with his dressing, or his half-mischievous, half-playfully tender inquiry of his father as to whether he could have the first supply of the hot bath water. We wandered about like lost souls until his first letter came. And one vivid sentence in it showed us that he had reached the danger zone:

"It has given me a thrill to-night to see the German flares go up like a truncated dawn."