you want to do _anything_ for Ireland then?" John Marsh had
asked.

"Oh, yes! I'll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote," he had replied.

"I know what your end will be," Patrick Galway added in a sullen voice.
"You'll become a Chelsea Nationalist ... willing to do anything for
Ireland but live in it!"

Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny-farthing
politics! London for him! London and a sense of bigness, of wide ideas
and the constant interplay of many minds!

He would talk to his father about Gilbert's proposal. There would be all
sorts of subjects to discuss with him, that and the question of an
allowance and the question of a career....

The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and presently
pulled up at the terminus. He descended from his carriage and called a
jarvey who drove him across the city to the Northern Counties station
where he took train again. It was late that night when he arrived at
Ballymartin.

THE SECOND CHAPTER

1

Mr. Quinn had become more absorbed in the Irish Agricultural
Co-Operative Movement, and he used the home farm for experiments in
scientific cultivation. His talk, when Henry returned home, was mainly
about a theory of tillage which he called "continuous cropping," and it
was with difficulty that Henry could persuade him to talk about
Gilbert's proposal that he should join the household in Bloomsbury.

"I'm glad you've come home, Henry," he said after breakfast on the
morning following Henry's return. "This system of continuous cropping is
splendid, but it wants careful attention. You've got to adjust it
continually to circumstances ... you can't follow any rules about it ...
and if you'll just stay here and help me with it, we'll be able to do
wonders with the home farm!"

Henry did not wish to settle in Ballymartin, at all events not for a
long time.

"I want to go to London, father!" he said.

"London! What for?" Mr. Quinn exclaimed, and then before Henry could say
why he wished to go to London, he added, "You'll have to settle on
something, Henry. I always meant you to take over the estate fairly
soon, to work things out with me. Don't you want to do that?"

"Not particularly, father!"

"Well, what's to become of you, then? Do you want to go into the Army?
It's a bit late!..."

"No, father!"

"Or the Navy? But you should have gone to Osborne long ago if you wanted
to do that!"

Henry shook his head.

"Well, what do you w