und out where you lodged.'

'Poor papa!'--said Nelly reflectively--'he was so puzzled. "There's that
fellow we saw at Wythburn again! Why on earth does he come here to fish?
I never saw anybody catch a thing in this bit of the river." Poor papa!'

They were both silent a little. Mr. Cookson had not lived long enough to
see Nelly and George Sarratt engaged. The war had killed him. Financial
embarrassment was already closing on him when it broke out, and he
could not stand the shock and the general dislocation of the first
weeks, as sounder men could. The terror of ruin broke him down--and he
was dead before Christmas, nominally of bronchitis and heart failure.
Nelly had worn mourning for him up to her wedding day. She had been very
sorry for 'poor papa'--and very fond of him; whereas Bridget had been
rather hard on him always. For really he had done his best. After all he
had left them just enough to live upon. Nelly's conscience, grown
tenderer than of old under the touch of joy, pricked her as she thought
of her father. She knew he had loved her best of his two daughters. She
would always remember his last lingering hand-clasp, always be thankful
for his last few words--'God bless you, dear.' But had she cared for him
enough in return?--had she really tried to understand him? Some
vague sense of the pathos of age--of its isolation--its dumb
renouncements--gripped her. If he had only lived longer! He would have
been so proud of George.

She roused herself.

'You did really make up your mind--_then_?' she asked him, just for the
pleasure of hearing him confess it again.

'Of course I did! But what was the good?'

She knew that he meant it had been impossible to speak while his mother
was still alive, and he, her only child, was partly dependent upon her.
But his mother had died not long after Nelly's father, and her little
income had come to her son. So now what with Nelly's small portion, and
his mother's two hundred and fifty a year in addition to his pay, the
young subaltern thought himself almost rich--in comparison with so many
others. His father, who had died while he was still at school, had been
a master at Harrow, and he had been brought up in a refined home, with
high standards and ideals. A scholarship at Oxford at one of the smaller
colleges, a creditable degree, then an opening in the office of a
well-known firm of solicitors, friends of his father, and a temporary
commission, as soon as war broke out,