decent
forestry on this estate for half a century. I hope you will be able
to persuade him, Miss Bremerton. I expect, indeed, it's Hobson's
choice.'

'You mean the timber will be commandeered?'

'Probably. The Government have just come down on some of Lord
Radley's woods just beyond our borders--with scarcely a week's
warning. No "With your leave" or "By your leave"! The price fixed,
Canadians sent down to cut, and a light railway built from the woods
to the station to carry the timber, before you could say "Jack
Robinson."'

'You think the price these people offer is a fair one?' She pointed
to the draft contract.

'Excellent! The Squire won't get nearly as much from the
Government.'

'What one might do with some of it for the estate!' said Elizabeth,
looking up, her blue eyes dancing in the lamplight.

'Rebuild half the cottages?' said the other, smiling, as he rose. 'A
village club-house, a communal kitchen, a small holdings scheme--all
the things we've talked about? Oh yes, you could do all that and
more. The Squire doesn't know what he possesses.'

'Well, I'll take the papers to him,' said Elizabeth, holding out her
hands for them. 'I may perhaps catch him to-night'

A little more business talk, and the agent departed. Then Elizabeth
dreamily--still cogitating a hundred things--touched an electric
bell. A girl typist, who acted as her clerk, came in from an
adjoining room. Elizabeth rapidly dictated a number of letters,
stayed for a little friendly gossip with the girl about her father
in the Army Service Corps, who had been in hospital at Rouen, and
had just finished, when the gong rang for afternoon tea.

* * * * *

When Elizabeth entered, the hall was crowded. It was the principal
sitting-room of the house, now that for reasons of economy fires
were seldom lit in the drawing-rooms. Before Elizabeth's advent it
had been a dingy, uncomfortable place, but she and Pamela had
entirely transformed it. As in the estate so in the house, the
Squire did not know what he possessed. In all old houses with a
continuous life, there are accumulations of furniture and stores,
discarded by the generation of one day, and brought back by the
fashion of the next. A little routing in attics and forgotten
cupboards and chests had produced astonishing results. Chippendale
chairs and settees had been brought down from the servants'
bedrooms; two fine Dutch cabinets had been discovered amid