ect! There's no place like England--when you 've done your
work."

"That's the proper way to look at it, my son."

And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the
moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small
boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought
in, and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been
his nursery and his playroom in the beginning. Then who should come to
tuck him up for the night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed,
and they talked for a long hour, as mother and son should, if there is
to be any future for the Empire. With a simple woman's deep guile she
asked questions and suggested answers that should have waked some sign
in the face on the pillow, and there was neither quiver of eyelid nor
quickening of breath, neither evasion nor delay in reply. So she
blessed him and kissed him on the mouth, which is not always a mother's
property, and said something to her husband later, at which he laughed
profane and incredulous laughs.

All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest
six-year-old, "with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie," to the
under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie's pet rod
in his hand, and "There's a four-pounder risin' below the lasher. You
don't 'ave 'em in Injia, Mast-Major Georgie." It was all beautiful
beyond telling, even though the mother insisted on taking him out in the
landau (the leather had the hot Sunday smell of his youth) and showing
him off to her friends at all the houses for six miles round; and the
pater bore him up to town and a lunch at the club, where he introduced
him, quite carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient warriors whose
sons were not the youngest majors in the army and had not the D.S.O.
After that it was Georgie's turn; and remembering his friends, he filled
up the house with that kind of officer who live in cheap lodgings at
Southsea or Montpelier Square, Brompton--good men all, but not well off.
The mother perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there
was no scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring.
They tore up the place for amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the
gardens when they ought to have been rehearsing; they swept off every
available horse and vehicle, especially the governess-cart and the fat
pony; they fell into the trout-ponds; they picnicked