t happened?" Philippa demanded. "You were, in a measure,
shelved. You were put on a list and told that you would hear from
them--a sort of Micawber-like situation with which you were perfectly
satisfied. Then you took that moor up in Scotland and disappeared for
nearly six months."

"I was supplying the starving population with food," he reminded her
genially. "We sent about four hundred brace of grouse to market, not to
speak of the salmon. We had some very fair golf, too, some of the time."

"Oh, I have not troubled to keep any exact account of your diversions!"
Philippa said scornfully. "Sometimes," she continued, "I wonder whether
you are quite responsible, Henry. How you can even talk of these things
when every man of your age and strength is fighting one way or another
for his country, seems marvellous to me. Do you realise that we are
fighting for our very existence? Do you realise that my own father, who
is fifteen years older than you, is in the firing line? This is a small
place, of course, but there isn't a man left in it of your age, with
your physique, who has had the slightest experience in either service,
who isn't doing something."

"I can't do more than send in applications," he grumbled. "Be
reasonable, my dear Philippa. It isn't the easiest thing in the world to
find a job for a sailor who has been out of it as long as I have."

"So you say, but when they ask me what you are doing, as they all did
in London this time, and I reply that you can't get a job, there is
generally a polite little silence. No one believes it. I don't believe
it."

"Philippa!"

Sir Henry turned in his chair. His cigar was burning now idly between
his fingers. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together.

"Well, I don't," she reiterated. "You can be angry, if you will--in
fact I think I should prefer you to be angry. You take no pains at
the Admiralty. You just go there and come away again, once a year or
something like that. Why, if I were you, I wouldn't leave the place
until they'd found me something--indoors or outdoors, what does it
matter so long as your hand is on the wheel and you are doing your
little for your country? But you--what do you care? You went to town
to get a job--and you come back with new mackerel spinners! You are off
fishing to-morrow morning with Jimmy Dumble. Somewhere up in the North
Sea, to-day and to-morrow and the next day, men are giving their lives
for their country. What do you care? You wil