the race."

"Oh Eliot, how awful. How can _you_ sleep in your bed?"

"You needn't worry. It's only a nightmare idea of mine."

And so on and so on, for he was still so young that he wanted Anne to be
excited by the things that excited him. And Anne told him all about her
Ilford farm and what she meant to do on it. Eliot didn't behave like
Aunt Adeline, he listened beautifully, like Uncle Robert and Jerrold, as
if it was really most important that you should have a farm and work on
it.

"What I want is to sell it and get one here. I don't want to be anywhere
else. I can't tell you how frightfully home-sick I am when I'm away. I
keep on seeing those gables with the little stone balls, and the
peacocks, and the fields down to the Manor Farm. And the hills, Eliot.
When I'm away I'm always dreaming that I'm trying to get back to them
and something stops me. Or I see them and they turn into something else.
I shan't be happy till I can come back for good."

"You don't want to go to India?" Eliot's heart began to beat as he asked
his question.

"I want to work. To work hard. To work till I'm so dead tired that I
roll off to sleep the minute I get into bed. So tired that I can't
dream."

"That isn't right. You're too young to feel like that, Anne."

"I do feel like it. You feel like it yourself--My farm is to me what
your old bacteria are to you."

"Oh, if I thought it was the farm--"

"Why, what else did you think it was?"

Eliot couldn't bring himself to tell her. He took refuge in apparent
irrelevance.

"You know Father left me the Manor Farm house, don't you?"

"No, I didn't. I suppose he thought you'd want to come back, like me."

"Well, I'm glad I've got it. Mother's got the Dower House in Wyck. But
she'll stay on here till--"

"Till Jerrold comes back," said Anne bravely.

"I don't suppose Jerry'll turn her out even then. Unless--"

But neither he nor Anne had the courage to say "unless he marries."

Not Anne, because she couldn't trust herself with the theme of Jerrold's
marrying. Not Eliot, because he had Jerrold's word for it that if he
married anybody, ever, it would not be Anne.

* * * * *

It was this assurance that made it possible for him to say what he had
been thinking of saying all the time that he talked to Anne about his
bacteriology. Bacteriology was a screen behind which Eliot, uncertain of
Anne's feelings, sheltered himself against irrevocable disaste