cart, to be greeted
by his mother with affection which he never seemed able to repay, to
drift into the library and detach his lank, unaging father from his
studies. Sir Francis had accepted marriage and the presence of a wife as
he would have accepted a new house and strange house-keeper; children
had been born; after the publication of his Smaller Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary the friend of a friend had recommended him, through a
friend's friend, for a knighthood, and he had bestirred himself with
wide-eyed, childish surprise for the investiture and a congratulatory
dinner at the Athenaeum, returning to Lashmar Mill-House grievously
unsettled and discontented for as much as a week. He had talked of
running up to London occasionally, of having these fellows down for the
week-end; he had complained that he was growing rusty and losing touch
with the world. Then the murmur of the mill-stream had drugged his
senses, and he had settled to the Century Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon,
Volume VII E-G.

After the restlessness of London, Eric could not at once accommodate
himself to the leisurely contentment and placidity of Lashmar.

"Wake up, Geoff!" he cried.

The boy yawned and stretched himself like a cat, then became suddenly
active and projected himself across the room, turning in the door-way to
shout: "Bags I first bath, Ricky!"

"Well, don't take all the hot water," Eric begged. After the ingenious
comfort of his flat in Ryder Street, he could not at once accommodate
himself to the simplicity of the Mill-House. "Pity you never turned the
east room into a bathroom," he said to his father. "You talked about it
for years. We _need_ another one."

It was an old controversy and part of Eric's persistent but fruitless
campaign against the studiedly Spartan attitude of Lashmar Mill-House.

"It's rather an unnecessary expense. And we seem to struggle on without
it," said Sir Francis.

"I avoid unnecessary struggles as much as possible," Eric answered
shortly.

"You couldn't get the work done while the war's on," Sir Francis pointed
out, rooting himself firmly in the particular.

Eric walked upstairs, reflecting in moody dissatisfaction on unnecessary
struggles. No one ever laid out his dress clothes for him at Lashmar. It
never _had_ been done when he was a school-boy, carefully protected from
pampering. Sporadic attempts were made, whenever he launched an
offensive against the domestic economy of the house; but the maids were