hea's
friend.

At Cheltenham he had been home on leave; and it was not until this year
that he had got his job at Woolwich teaching gunnery, while he waited
for a bigger job in the Ordnance Department. Ferdie Cameron had always
said that Frank Drayton would be worth watching. He would be part of the
brains of the Army some day. Nicky watched him. His brains and their
familiarity with explosives and the machinery of warfare had been his
original attraction for Nicky. But it was Dorothea who watched him most.

She plunged abruptly into Nicky's affair, giving names and lineage. "You
know all sorts of people, do you know anything about her?"

He looked at her clearly, without smiling. Then he said "Yes. I know a
good bit about her. Is that what's wrong with Nicky?"

"Not exactly. But he's been sent down."

His wry smile intimated that such things might be.

Then she told him what the Master had written and what the Professor had
written and what Michael had written, and what Nicky had said, and what
she, Dorothea thought. Drayton smiled over the Master's and the
Professor's letters, but when it came to Michael's letter he
laughed aloud.

"It's all very well for _us_. But Daddy and Mummy are breaking their
hearts. Daddy says he's going down to Cambridge to see what really
did happen."

Again that clear look. She gathered that he disapproved of "Booster's"
wife. He disapproved of so many things: of Women's Suffrage; of
revolutions; of women who revolted; of anybody who revolted; of Mrs.
Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite. It was
putting it too mildly to say he disapproved of Rosalind Jervis; he
detested her. He disapproved of Vera and of her going to see Vera; she
remembered that he had even disapproved, long ago, of poor Ferdie,
though he liked him. Evidently he disapproved of "Booster's" wife for
the same reason that he disapproved of Vera. That was why he didn't
say so.

"I believe you think all the time I'm right," she said. "Would you go
down if you were he?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he won't get anything out of them. They can't give her away any
more than Nicky can. Or than _you_ can, Dorothy."

"You mean I've done it already--to you. I _had_ to, because of Nicky. I
can't help it if you _do_ think it was beastly of me."

"My dear child--"

He got up vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms and
stifle her outbreak that way. But something in her ey