ou,' said Sarratt, rather formally--'but I am afraid our days
are getting pretty full.'

'Of course, of course!' said Sir William, smiling. 'I only meant, if you
happened to be walking in that direction and want a rest. I have a
number of drawings there--my own and other people's, which Mrs. Sarratt
might care to see--sometime. You go on Saturday?'

'Yes. I'm due to rejoin by Monday.'

Farrell's expression darkened.

'You see what keeps me?' he said, sharply, striking his left knee with
the flat of his hand. 'I had a bad fall, shooting in Scotland, years
ago--when I was quite a lad. Something went wrong in the knee-cap. The
doctors muffed it, and I have had a stiff knee ever since. I daresay
they'd give me work at the War Office--or the Admiralty. Lots of fellows
I know who can't serve are doing war-work of that kind. But I can't
stand office work--never could. It makes me ill, and in a week of it I
am fit to hang myself. I live out of doors. I've done some
recruiting--speaking for the Lord Lieutenant. But I can't speak worth a
cent--and I do no good. No fellow ever joined up because of my
eloquence!--couldn't if he tried. No--I've given up my house--it was the
best thing I could do. It's a jolly house, and I've got lots of jolly
things in it. But the War Office and I between us have turned it into a
capital hospital. We take men from the Border regiments mostly. I wonder
if I shall ever be able to live in it again! My sister and I are now in
the agent's house. I work at the hospital three or four days a week--and
then I come here and sketch. I don't see why I shouldn't.'

He straightened his shoulder as though defying somebody. Yet there was
something appealing, and, as it were, boyish, in the defiance. The man's
patriotic conscience could be felt struggling with his dilettantism.
Sarratt suddenly liked him.

'No, indeed,' he said heartily. 'Why shouldn't you?' 'It's when one
thinks of _your_ job, one feels a brute to be doing anything one likes.'

'Well, you'd be doing the same job if you could. That's all right!' said
Sarratt smiling.

It was curious how in a few minutes the young officer had come to seem
the older and more responsible of the two men. Yet Farrell was clearly
his senior by some ten or fifteen years. Instinctively Nelly moved
nearer to George. She liked to feel how easily he could hold his own
with great people, who made _her_ feel nervous. For she understood from
Mrs. Weston that the Farrells