, or defence.

Indoors Rowsley and Isabel, with the rapidity of long use, laid
the cloth, and Isabel fetched cold beef from the larder and
butter and eggs from the dairy, while Rowsley went down the
cellar with a jug and a candle and drew from the cask a generous
allowance of beer. "Come along in, old Val," said Isabel,
reappearing at the open window, "You and Rose are both famishing
and I'm not," this was a pious fiction, "so you can begin and
I'll wait for Jimmy. I dare say he's gone wandering off
somewhere and won't be in till ten."

Val came across the dark, cool lawn and climbed over the window
sill. A shabby room, large and low: a faded paper, grey toning
to blue: a carpet of faded roses on a grey ground: the shaded
Dresden lamp and roselit supper table shining like an island in
a pool of shadow, and those two beloved heads, both so dark and
smooth and young, tam cara capita! Neither of them suspected
that Val was unhappy. His feeling for them was more fatherly
than fraternal, and Rowsley, strange to say, fell in with Val's
attitude, coming to his brother for money as naturally as most
young men go to their parents. Val sat at the head of the table
because Mr. Stafford could not carve. "There!" said Isabel,
giving him his plate. "Mustard? I've just made it so you
needn't look to see if it's fresh. Watercress: I picked it
myself. Lettuce. Cream and vinegar and sugar. Beer. Now do
you feel happy? Lord love you, dear, I like to see you eat."

She sat on the arm of Mr. Stafford's mahogany chair. "What time
do you want breakfast? Seven o'clock? Major Clowes wouldn't come
down at seven if he were your agent. Can you get back to tea
tomorrow? Laura may bring the cousin up to tea with her and she
wants him to meet you."

"Very good of her. Why?"

"Oh, because he was in the Army too and all through the war. He
went out with the first hundred thousand. He's much older than
you are--the same age as Laura. Oh, wait a minute!" exclaimed
Isabel in the tone in which a Frenchwoman says Tenez. I forgot.
She thinks you must have met him, Val."

"Possibly," said Val.

"Was he in the Dorchesters?" asked Rowsley--much more
interested than his brother, no doubt because he was not so
hungry as Val, who was giving all his attention to his supper.

"No, in the Winchesters," said Isabel. "Do I mean the
Winchesters, Val? What was Major Clowes' old regiment?"

"Clowes was in the Wintons."

Isabel n