not
at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what
they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic
usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the
small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the
house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the
housekeeper, was known to have said that though she never _saw_ Master
Terry she _felt_ he was there.

The dogs were aware of his coming before he came. They had their own
intuitions of the joyful expectancy in the house and what it meant.
Shot would take to lying in the hall, with one wistful eye fixed on the
open hall door, while Lady O'Gara's two Poms became quite hysterical,
rushing out when there was no one at all or some one they were well
accustomed to, assailing them with foolish shrieks.

"It is all right when Terence is coming home," Lady O'Gara said,
smiling. "I can forgive Chloe and Cupid for yapping. It is when he is
gone and they rush out at every sound that I find it unbearable."

"You will kill the fatted calf for Terry," Sir Shawn grumbled, "as
though he had been a year away. The youngster does nothing but amuse
himself. When I was his age we got in some hard work at soldiering."

"Every generation says the same of the one that comes after it," Lady
O'Gara rejoined. "Terry loves his work, though he manages to enjoy
himself."

"Too much of a golden youth," grumbled his father. "You spoil the boy,
Mary!" But his eyes were glad all the time, and the grumbling was only
a pretence.

"You'll see what the golden boys are capable of if the war they are
always talking about comes in our time," Lady O'Gara said, and a swift
shadow passed over her face. "I hope there will be no more wars, even
to vindicate them. I suffered enough in those years of the South
African War when you were out and Terry and I were alone."

Eileen arrived a few hours earlier than Terry. She clapped her hands
to her ears when she arrived, and the Poms broke out into shrill
chorus. Shot, who began already to be very dim-sighted, came to the
door to see what the clamour was about, and with the most indifferent
movement of his tail returned to his place on the rug before the fire.

"Little beasts!" said Eileen, poking viciously at the Poms with her
umbrella. "I don't know how you endure them, Cousin Mary; I can hardly
tell which is the worst, Chloe or Cupid."

Eileen had never liked