ps three times a week.
Each thought his brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest
opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they
stood together in trouble, grew. But of that trouble they never spoke,
though not seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses
perched on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little
frown of sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.
And once in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his
journal, to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that
happened, Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper
type, and apologise to Edward for swearing. And he would think: 'Poor
Ted! He ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and forget it. What
a pity he's a parson!'

In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism. "He eats
nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
blue moon. He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
his wife. I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but--dash it all
I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up some
clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it." When the cream
came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found
that he had finished it himself. "We never talk about Nollie," he wrote,
"I'm always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but
when it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too;
it sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old, and we've
always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot
chap came over and founded us. The only black sheep I ever heard of is
Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here
to see Ted. I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were
married. Phew! That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering
round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost. Even now she
can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole;
thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital
and all that. Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."

"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote
a little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
downright fo