r good, but I suppose most fellows get
that just before they go out. I began another play about a month ago,
and I think it will be good, much better than anything else I've done. I
wish I had time to finish it before leaving home. This is rather a mess
of a letter, and I must chuck it now, for Ninian is getting tied up in
an effort to cultivate a cordial understanding with the waiter, and I
shall have to rescue them both or there'll be a rupture between the
Allies. Give my love to Mary and Mrs. Graham. I'd have gone to
Boveyhayne to see them if I possibly could, tell them. So long, old
chap!_

"_Yours Ever_,

"_Gilbert Farlow_."

* * * * *

He showed the letter to Mary, and as he gave it to her, he felt a new
pleasure in his love for her, the pleasure of sharing things, of having
confidences together.

"Gilbert's a dear," she said, when she had finished reading the letter.
"It would be awfully hard not to be fond of him!"

He took the letter and put it in his pocket, and then he put his arm in
Mary's and led her to the garden where the spring flowers were blowing.
"I've had great luck," he said. "I have Gilbert for my friend and I have
you, Mary, to be my wife, and I don't know that I deserve either!"

"Silly Quinny!" she said affectionately.

8

They spent the days of Ninian's leave in visiting all the familiar
places about Boveyhayne. It seemed almost that Ninian could not see
enough of them. He would rise early, rousing them with insistent shouts,
and urge them to make haste and prepare for a long walk; and all day
they tramped along the roads, up the combes and down the combes, over
commons, through woods, lingering in the lanes to pluck the wildflowers
that grew profusely in the hedgerows, or listening to the mating birds
that flew continually about them. They walked along the Roman Road to
Lyme Regis in the east, and along the Roman Road again to Sidmouth in
the west, returning in the dark, tired and hungry; and sometimes they
went into the roadside public-houses because of the warm, comfortable
smell they had, and because they liked to listen to the slow, burring
voices of the labourers as they drank their beer and cider and talked of
the day's doings. There was a corner of the Common, near the edge of the
cliff, where they could lie when the sun was warm, and look out over the
Channel to where the Brixham trawlers lay in a line along the horizon.
Westwards, the r