"bit." But I shouldn't wonder if your father
thought better of it after all.'

Pamela flushed indignantly.

'He all but signed a codicil to his will last night! He's in a
tearing hurry about it. He called in Miss Bremerton and wanted her
to witness it. And she refused. So father threw it into a drawer,
and nobody knows what has happened.'

'Miss Bremerton? The new secretary?' The tone expressed both
amusement and curiosity. 'Ah! I hear all sorts of interesting things
about her.'

Pamela straightened her shoulders defiantly.

'Of course she's interesting. She's terribly clever and up to date,
and all the rest of it. She's beginning to boss father, and very
soon she'll boss all the rest of us.'

'Perhaps you wanted it!' said Captain Chicksands, smiling.

'Perhaps we did,' Pamela admitted. 'But one needn't like it all the
same. Well, she's rationed us--that's one good thing--and father
really doesn't guess! And now she's begun to take an interest in
the farms! I believe she's walked over to the Holme Wood farm
to-day, to see for herself what state it's in. Father's in town. And
she's trying hard to keep father out of a horrible row with the
County Committee.'

'About ploughing up the park?'

Pamela nodded.

'Plucky woman!' said Arthur Chicksands heartily. 'I'm sure you help
her, Pamela, all you can?'

'I don't like being managed,' said the girl stubbornly, rather
resenting his tone.

A slight shade of sternness crossed the soldier's face.

'You know it's no good playing with this war,' he said drily. 'It's
as much to be won here as it is over seas. _Food_!--that'll be the
last word for everybody. And it's women's work as much as men's.'

She saw that she had jarred on him. But an odd jealousy--or perhaps
her hidden disappointment--drove her on.

'Yes, but one doesn't like strangers interfering,' she said
childishly.

The soldier threw her a side-glance, while his lip twitched a
little. So this was Pamela--grown-up. She seemed to him rather
foolish--and very lovely. There was no doubt about that! She was
going to be a beauty, and of a remarkable type. He himself was a
strong, high-minded, capable fellow, with an instinctive interest in
women, and a natural aptitude for making friends with them. He was
inclined, always, to try and set them in the right way; to help them
to some of the mental training which men got in a hundred ways, and
women, as it seemed to him, were often so deplorably without. But