im?" asked Sara one day, as
he sprawled in blissful indolence on the great bearskin in front of her
fire, pulling happily at a beloved old pipe.

"Do with myself?" he repeated. "What do you mean? I'm doing very
comfortably just at present"--glancing round him appreciatively.

"I mean--what are you going to be? Aren't you going to enter any
profession?"

Tim sat up suddenly, removing his pipe from his mouth.

"No," he said shortly.

"But why not? You can't slack about here for ever, doing nothing.
I should have thought you would have gone into the Army, like your
father."

His blue eyes hardened.

"That's what I wanted to do," he said gruffly. "But the mother wouldn't
hear of it."

Sara could sense the pain in his suddenly roughened tones.

"But why? You'd make a splendid soldier, Tim"--eyeing his long length
affectionately.

"I should have loved it," he said wistfully. "I wanted it more than
anything. But mother worried so frightfully whenever I suggested the
idea that I had to give it up. I'm to learn to be a landowner and squire
and all that sort of tosh instead."

"But that could come later."

Tim shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course it could. But mother refused point-blank to let me go to
Sandhurst. So now, unless a war crops up--and it doesn't look as though
there's much chance of that!--I'm out of the running. But if it ever
does, Sara"--he laid his hand eagerly on her knee--"I swear I'll be one
of the first to volunteer. I was a fool to give in to the mother over
the matter, only she was simply making herself ill about it, and, of
course, I couldn't stand that."

Sara wondered why Mrs. Durward should have interfered to prevent her son
from following what was obviously his natural bent. It would have seemed
almost inevitable that, as a soldier's son, he should enter one or other
of the Services, and instead, here he was, stranded in a little country
backwater, simply eating his heart out. Mentally she determined to
broach the subject to Elisabeth as soon as an opportunity presented
itself; but for the moment she skillfully drew the conversation away
from what was evidently a sore subject, and suggested that Tim should
accompany her into Fallowdene, where she had an errand at the post
office. He assented eagerly, with a shake of his broad shoulders as
though to rid himself of the disagreeable burden of his thoughts.

From the window of his wife's sitting-room Major Durward watched the two
as the