a likely land investment for your money, and
endeavour to prepare a good legal statement to frighten Mrs. Rainham
if she objects to your taking your sister away. Much may be done by
bluffing, especially if you do it very solemnly and quietly. So keep a
good heart, and come and see me next time you're in London. Miss Tommy
will be in any day, I presume, after the telegram you told me about?"

"Sure to be," said Bob. "She'll be anxious for her letters. I'm leaving
one for her, if you don't mind, and I'll write to her again to-night."
He got up, holding out his hand. "Good-bye--and I don't know how to
thank you, sir."

"Bless the boy--you've nothing to thank me for," said the lawyer. "Just
send me that letter from your commanding officer, and remember that
there's no wild hurry about plans--Miss Tommy can stand for a few weeks
longer what she has borne for two years."

"I suppose she can--but I don't want her to," Bob said.

The brisk office-boy showed him out, and he marched down the grey
streets near Lincoln's Inn with his chin well up. Life had taken a
sudden and magical turn for the better. Three thousand pounds!--surely
that meant no roughing it for Tommy, but a comfortable home and a
chance of success in life. It seemed a sum of enormous possibilities.
Everything was very vague still, but at least the money was certain--it
seemed like fairy gold. He felt a sudden desire to get away somewhere,
with Tommy, away from crowded England to a country where a man could
breathe; his heart rejoiced at the idea, just as he had often exulted
when his aeroplane had lifted him away from the crowded, buzzing camp,
into the wide, free places of the air. Canada called to him temptingly.
His brain was seething with plans to go there when, waiting for a chance
to cross a crowded thoroughfare, he heard his own name.

"Asleep, Rainham?"

Bob looked up with a start. General Harran, the Australian, was beside
him, also waiting for a break in the crawling string of motor-buses and
taxi-cabs. He was smiling under his close-clipped moustache.

"I beg your pardon, sir," stammered the boy, coming to the salute
stiffly. "I was in a brown study, I believe."

"You looked it. I spoke to you twice before you heard me. What is
it?--demobilization problems?"

"Just that, sir," said Bob, grinning. "Most of us have got them, I
suppose--fellows of my age, anyhow. It's a bit difficult to come down to
earth again, after years spent in the air."