silver to put in the bag on Sundays. I wouldn't even let him have the
money to tip the hunt servants with, but sent it by postal order. He was
furiously sulky about it, but I reminded him of what happened to the ten
shillings that I gave him for the Young Men's Endeavour League
'Self-Denial Week.'"

"What did happen to it?" asked Eleanor.

"Well, Ronnie did some preliminary endeavouring with it, on his own
account, in connection with the Grand National. If it had come off, as
he expressed it, he would have given the League twenty-five shillings and
netted a comfortable commission for himself; as it was, that ten
shillings was one of the things the League had to deny itself. Since
then I've been careful not to let him have a penny piece in his hands."

"He'll get round that in some way," said Eleanor with quiet conviction;
"he'll sell things."

"My dear, he's done all that is to be done in that direction already.
He's got rid of his wrist-watch and his hunting flask and both his
cigarette cases, and I shouldn't be surprised if he's wearing imitation-
gold sleeve links instead of those his Aunt Rhoda gave him on his
seventeenth birthday. He can't sell his clothes, of course, except his
winter overcoat, and I've locked that up in the camphor cupboard on the
pretext of preserving it from moth. I really don't see what else he can
raise money on. I consider that I've been both firm and farseeing."

"Has he been at the Norridrums lately?" asked Eleanor.

"He was there yesterday afternoon and stayed to dinner," said Mrs.
Attray. "I don't quite know when he came home, but I fancy it was late."

"Then depend on it he was gambling," said Eleanor, with the assured air
of one who has few ideas and makes the most of them. "Late hours in the
country always mean gambling."

"He can't gamble if he has no money and no chance of getting any," argued
Mrs. Attray; "even if one plays for small stakes one must have a decent
prospect of paying one's losses."

"He may have sold some of the Amherst pheasant chicks," suggested
Eleanor; "they would fetch about ten or twelve shillings each, I
daresay."

"Ronnie wouldn't do such a thing," said Mrs. Attray; "and anyhow I went
and counted them this morning and they're all there. No," she continued,
with the quiet satisfaction that comes from a sense of painstaking and
merited achievement, "I fancy that Ronnie had to content himself with the
role of onlooker last night, as far as