and viewing the
remains of the duck disconsolately, for he did not see what portion of
its gaunt skeleton was going to furnish him with dinner, and duck was
one of his weaknesses, "dear me, there's a dreadful smell of burning in
this room. Do you think it can be the beef, my love?"

"Of course it is not the beef," replied Mrs. Walrond rather sharply.
"The beef is beautifully done."

"Oh!" ejaculated one of the girls who had got the calcined bit, "why,
mother, you said it was burnt yourself."

"Never mind what I said," replied Mrs. Walrond severely, "especially as
I was mistaken. It is very rude of your father to make remarks about the
meat."

"Well, something _is_ burning, my love."

Janey, who was sitting next to Anthony, paused from her meal to sniff,
then exclaimed in a voice of delight:

"Oh! it is Anthony's coat tails. Just look, they are turning quite
brown. Why, Anthony, you must be as beautifully done as the beef. If you
can sit there and say nothing, you are a Christian martyr wasted, that's
all."

Anthony sprang up, murmuring that he thought there was something wrong
behind, which on examination there proved to be. The end of it was that
the chairs were all pushed downwards, with the result that for the rest
of that meal there was a fiery gulf fixed between him and Barbara which
made further confidences impossible. So he had to talk of other matters.
Of these, as it chanced, he had something to say.

A letter had arrived that morning from his elder brother George, who
was an officer in a line regiment. It had been written in the trenches
before Sebastopol, for these events took place in the mid-Victorian
period towards the end of the Crimean War. Or rather the letter had been
begun in the trenches and finished in the military hospital, whither
George had been conveyed, suffering from "fever and severe chill," which
seemed to be somewhat contradictory terms, though doubtless they were in
fact compatible enough. Still he wrote a very interesting letter, which,
after the pudding had been consumed to the last spoonful, Anthony read
aloud while the girls ate apples and cracked nuts with their teeth.

"Dear me! George seems to be very unwell," said Mrs. Walrond.

"Yes," answered Anthony, "I am afraid he is. One of the medical officers
whom my father knows, who is working in that hospital, says they mean
to send him home as soon as he can bear the journey, though he doesn't
think it will be just at prese