Lord Crowborough means well. It's what everybody says of him. It's what they generally do say of thoroughly tiresome people, isn't it?—especially if they've got titles. Of course he is tiresome, and so is she, but both of them have their uses, so one puts up with it."

Lady Eldridge laughed. Her laugh was agreeable to listen to, and always meant that she was amused. "What uses?" she asked.

"Well, there's the Castle to go to, for one thing."

"You used to bewail your lot in being expected to go so much to the Castle."

"My dear, I've grown wiser, as well as a good deal poorer. Nobody can deny that the Castle is desperately dull, entirely owing to the people who inhabit it; for it's a fine enough house. But they do occasionally have people to stay, though I don't know whether you've noticed that the same people seldom come twice. It's a house to go to. To that I've come—that I'm thankful for an invitation to dine at Pershore Castle. I'm not sure that I didn't even angle for it. I certainly intimated that if Edmund didn't think it good enough, the invitation was on no account to be withdrawn from Pam and me. I made eyes at her, and she gave in at once. She thinks I'm a very sweet woman, until she goes away from me, and then she's not so sure about it. Am I a sweet woman, Eleanor, or a bit of a cat? I'm never quite certain."

"You were a very sweet child," said Lady Eldridge, whose face had become rather serious during this speech. "I always loved you and always shall. And as long as you say everything you think to me...."

"Oh, my dear, I shall always do that. You're one of the few comforts left to me in life. I can't grumble to Edmund, or the children. Besides, you're so generous. I should never have had my little bit of London this year but for you. How I should have missed it! And how I enjoyed it! There is no doubt that one does enjoy pleasures that come to one unexpectedly more than those that one takes as a matter of course."

"Well, Cynthia, you know that until you have a house of your own again in London, ours is there for you to come to whenever you like. And for the girls too. It doesn't want saying, does it, dear? We've always been very close together. There was a time when I owed almost all my pleasures in life to you, and I don't forget how generous you were. We've been fortunate, Bill and I, and at a time when so many people have had to alter their way of living. It's nice to think that our good fortune is of use not only to ourselves; that those we love can share it with us. I suppose there aren't many people who are so close together as you and Edmund and Bill and I. And our children too. I can't imagine anything that would come between us."

"No," said Mrs. Eldridge. "I can't either. It's a great comfort to have you here. I don't know what we should do without you."

CHAPTER III

NORMAN

Norman Eldridge and his cousin Pamela detached themselves from the tennis players and strolled off through the bare blaze of the upper garden with its elaborate architecture of walls and steps and pavings and pergolas, and its bright, restless plantings, into the shade of the woods.

They were close friends, these two, and had been so ever since Norman as a boy of eight had fallen in love with Pamela as a baby of two. It's a nice sort of boy who loves children, and Norman had been a very attractive small boy, high-spirited, energetic and mischievous, but never a source of anxiety with his mischievousness, as his cousin Hugo had been. Hugo was a year older than Norman, and always eager to make his seniority felt. In those early days Norman had paid visits from the little house in Hampstead where his parents then lived, to Hayslope Hall, and greatly enjoyed the ample life of the country house, with ponies to ride, the river to fish, later on rabbits and birds to shoot, and all the blissful freedom of the woods and fields. But Hugo, his constant companion in holiday activities, had spoilt a good deal of the pleasure of them. At first Norman had given way and been bullied. It seemed as if Hugo were unable to enjoy himself without being unpleasant. He was bigger and stronger than Norman, and had all the advantage of being on his own ground. In earlier visits, when both children had been under the eye of nurses and governess, there had been frequent quarrels, but Hugo had been forced more or less to behave himself. But during that month of Christmas holidays, when Hugo had come home from his first term at school, he had turned Norman's excitement and pleasure into a dragging unhappiness, which increased so much that he came to count the days before the end of his visit as eagerly as he had counted those which had brought him to it.

Hugo, as a schoolboy, tyrannized over him, and yet he wanted him for his games, and hardly ever left him in peace. There was another boy, a year older than Hugo—Fred Comfrey, son of the Rector of Hayslope—who was constantly with them. He took his line from Hugo, and helped in the bullying. Poor little Norman used to cry himself to sleep every night, but it was his pride never to let his tormentors see how much they hurt him. His uncle and aunt were kind to him. It would sometimes come over him with a sense of bewilderment how little they knew of his real feelings; for everything seemed to be right when the boys were with them. No doubt they thought he was enjoying himself to the full, having everything that a boy could want to make him happy.

It was at this time that he came to adore little Pamela, whose bright prattle and pretty, loving ways with him soothed his sore heart. But it was only now and then that he could forget himself, playing with her. The other boys were brutally scornful of his taste for the companionship of a baby.

He did not go to Hayslope again until a year later. By that time he was a schoolboy himself. He had thought a good deal about his cousin Hugo, and about Fred Comfrey, in the interval, and come to the conclusion, assisted by an intimate friend of his own age to whom he had disclosed the matter, that he had been a bally ass to be put down by them.

He had entered the republic of his school with unhappy anticipations of the life he would lead there, with forty tyrants to domineer over him instead of two. If it had not been for his experience with Hugo and Fred, he would have escaped months of anticipatory dread. But his fears proved groundless. This was a very good school for small boys, with a headmaster whose outstanding aim was to make friends of them all and to keep them happy. He was helped by his wife, who loved children and had none of her own. The forty boys were her family, and outside school hours they used the whole house as if it were their home. Under this happy rule there were no awkward fences for a little boy new to school life to surmount. He was welcomed as a member of the family, and one who was expected to do it credit. Everything was done to bring out whatever originality of character he had in him. The elder boys, taking their tone from the headmaster, his wife and assistants, were kind and protective. The only objection to the system was that a new boy of self-assertive habits occasionally made himself something of a nuisance. But the standards and ideals of school life soon told on all but the incorrigibles; the headmaster knew when and how to exercise severity on the rare occasions on which it was required; and if a boy had not submitted himself to the tone of the school by the end of his first year his parents were asked to remove him. That sometimes made trouble for the headmaster, but he was content to