him
at breakfast: they kept stealing glances at him, photographing him in
their minds. Gratian got her camera and did actually photograph him in
the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against
all regulations for the defence of the realm. It was Noel who suggested:
"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three,
and forget there's a war."

So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects. Yet
that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer
things all as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and
the white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity
which clings to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of
land and sea had its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three
alone with Nature, this once more, the last time for--who could say how
long? They talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened
before the war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted
past. Pierson sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering
a little still from the stiffness of his unwonted garments. And the
girls lay one on each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.
Noel could not bear his collar.

"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy. Perhaps out there
they'll let you take it off. It must be fearfully hot in Egypt. Oh! I
wish I were going. I wish I were going everywhere in the world. Some
day!" Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of Euripides. And
now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage. But Noel lay silent,
looking at the sky. Whenever his voice ceased, there was the song of the
larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.

They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
before Evening Service. Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue
out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel
was the first to go up to her bedroom. She went without saying good
night--she knew her father would come to her room that last evening.
George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson
in the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn
curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.

"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."

"She can only ta