'How much time have you got?' asked the Squire abruptly.

'Oh, a few minutes. Aubrey and I are to have some supper before I
go. But Forest'll come and tell me.'

'Everything ready? Got money enough?'

'Rather! I shan't want anything for an age. Why, I shall be buying
war-loan out of my pay!'

He laughed happily. Then his face grew suddenly serious.

'Look here, father--I want awfully to say something. Do you mind?'

'If you want to say it, I suppose you will say it.'

The Squire was sitting hunched up, looking old and tired, his thick
white hair piled fantastically above his eyes.

Desmond straightened his shoulders with the air of one going over
the parapet.

'Well, it's this, father. I do wish you'd give up that row about the
park!'

The Squire sat up impatiently.

'That's not your business, Desmond. It can't matter to you.'

'Yes, but it _does_ matter to me!' said the boy with energy. 'It'll
be in all the papers--the fellows will gas about it at mess--it's
awfully hard lines on me. It makes me feel rotten!'

The Squire laughed. He was reminded of a Fourth of June years
before, when Desmond had gone through agonies of shame because
his father was not, in his eyes, properly 'got-up' for the
occasion--how he had disappeared in the High Street, and only
joined his people again in the crowd at the fireworks.

'I recommend you to stick it, Desmond. It won't last long. I've got
my part to play, and you've got yours. You fight because they make
you.'

'I _don't!_' said the boy passionately. 'I fight because--'

Then his words broke down. He descended from the table.

'Well, all right, father. I suppose it's no good talking. Only if
you think I shan't mind if you get yourself put in quad, you're
jolly well mistaken. Hullo, Forest! I'm coming!'

He hurried off, the Squire moving slowly after him. In the hour
before the boy departed he was the spoilt darling of his sisters and
the servants, who hung round him, and could not do enough for him.
He endured it, on the whole, patiently dashing out at the very end
to say good-bye to an old gardener, once a keeper, with whom he used
to go ferreting in the park. To his father alone his manner was not
quite as usual. It was the manner of one who had been hurt. The
Squire felt it.

As to his elder son, he and Aubrey parted without any outward sign
of discord, and on the way to London Aubrey, with the dry detachment
that was natural to him in speaking of himse