r have farms to sell, Uncle Robert?"

"Well, not to sell. To let, perhaps, if a tenant goes. You can have the
Barrow Farm when old Sutton dies. He can't last long. But," he went on,
"you'll find it very different farming here."

"How different?"

"Well, in some of those fields you'll have to fight the charlock all the
time. And in some the soil's hard. And in some you've got to plough
across the sun because of the slope of the land... Remember, Jerrold,
Anne's to have the Barrow Farm, if she wants it, when Sutton dies."

Jerrold laughed. "My dear father, I shall be in India."

"I'll remind you, Uncle Robert."

Uncle Robert smiled. "I'll tell Barker to remember," he said. Barker was
his agent.

It was as if he were thinking that when Sutton died he might not be
there. And he had said that Sutton wouldn't last long. Anne looked at
Jerrold. But Jerrold's face was happy. He didn't see it.

They left Uncle Robert in the library, drinking hot water for tea.

"Jerrold," Anne said, "I'm sure Uncle Robert's ill."

"Oh no. It's only indigestion. He'll be as right as rain in a day or
two."

V

Anne's cat Nicky was dying.

Jerrold struggled with his sleep, pushing it back and back before him,
trying to remember.

There was something; something that had hung over him the night before.
He had been afraid to wake and find it there. Something--.

Now he remembered.

Nicky was dying and Anne was unhappy. That was what it was; that was
what he had hated to wake to, Anne's unhappiness and the little cat.

There was nothing else. Nothing wrong with Daddy--only indigestion. He
had had it before.

The room was still dark, but the leaded squares of the window lattices
barred a sky pale with dawn. In her room across the passage Anne would
be sitting up with Nicky. He remembered now that he had to get up early
to make her some tea.

He lit a candle and went to her door to see if she were still awake. Her
voice answered his gentle tapping, "Who's there?"

"Me. Jerrold. May I come in?"

"Yes. But don't bring the light in. He's sleeping."

He put out the candle and made his way to her. Against the window panes
he could see the outline of her body sitting upright in a chair. She
glimmered there in her white wrapper and he made out something black
stretched straight and still in her lap. He sat down in the window-seat
and watched.

The room was mysterious, full of dusk air that thinned as the dawn
stirred in it palpa