, and their father had only to stretch out a long, legal tentacle
and claw her back, it was clear that her position would be harder than
ever. He could only give in, at any rate, for the present, and in his
anxiety for the little sister whom Aunt Margaret had always trained him
to protect, he humbled himself to beg for better treatment for her. "No
one ever was angry with her," he said. "She'll do anything for you if
you're decent to her."

"She might give less cause for annoyance if she had had a little
more severity," said Mrs. Rainham with an unspoken sneer at poor Aunt
Margaret. "You had better advise her to do her best in return for the
very comfortable home we give her." With which Bob had to endeavour
to be content, for the present. He went off to find Cecilia, with a
lowering brow, leaving his stepmother not nearly so easy in her mind as
she seemed. For Bob had a square jaw, and was apt to talk little and do
a good deal; and his affection for Cecilia was, in Mrs. Rainham's eyes,
little short of ridiculous.

Thereafter, the brother and sister took counsel together and made great
plans for the future, when once the Air Force should decide that it had
no further wish to keep Captain Robert Rainham from earning his living
on terra firma. What that future was to be for Bob was very difficult to
plan. Aunt Margaret had intended him for a profession; but the time for
that had gone by, even had the money been still available. "I'm half
glad that it isn't," Bob said; "I don't see how a fellow could go back
to swotting over books after being really alive for nearly five years."
There seemed nothing but "the land" in some shape or form; they were
not very clear about it, but Bob was strenuously "keeping his ears
open"--like so many lads of his rank in the early months of 1919,
when the future that had seemed so indefinite during the years of war
suddenly loomed up, very large and menacing. Cecilia had less anxiety;
she had a cheerful faith that Bob would manage something--a three-roomed
cottage somewhere in the country, where he could look after sheep, or
crops, or something of the kind, while she cooked and mended for
him, and grew such flowers as had bloomed in the dear garden at
Fontainebleau. Sheep and crops, she was convinced, grew themselves, in
the main; a person of Bob's ability would surely find little difficulty
in superintending the process. And, whatever happened, nothing could be
worse than life in Lancaster