"I wish you would enlighten me as to this Monica Pembroke. She has only appeared since I left home. Everyone seems to know her, but I don't."
"I suppose not; but she used to live at Crawford Manor, only after her parents' death she lost all her money and left the neighbourhood. She had one brother abroad in New Zealand. He wrote to her, telling her his wife was dead, and he wanted to come home. He said he would take a farm in England if she would join him. And she worked hard at an agricultural college and was full of it, and then on his way home, her brother died, and a small imp of a boy arrived alone. Monnie has, of course, adopted him, has put her brother's money into a farm, as he wished, and means to bring up the imp to work it. Meanwhile, she's master, and is making a huge success of it. She's a dear. She succeeds in everything she puts her hand to. I wish I had half her energy and capability."
"What would you do with it?"
Sidney's eyes grew wistful.
"I should like to be of use to my generation," she said.
"Be content with being useful to your old father and uncle," said the Admiral. "I hate these rampaging public women, and pray you may never be one of them."
"I don't care a button for my generation," said Austin—"wish I did. I loathed all the mangy chaps at Oxford. There were a few who were rather decent chaps, but I would always rather people were useful to me than the other way about. I say, Sid, will you come up Rock Beacon with me after tea? It will be cool enough for a climb. You see how your society is beginning to invigorate me!"
"Yes; I am longing for bracing air. We'll go."
They started when tea was over. It was not the first time they had climbed the Beacon together. It lay about a mile from them, and as they went, Austin plunged into confidences about his home and the work that was so distasteful to him.
"You understand," he said; "I've no one else to grouse to. If I was given a free hand I would work from morning to night and be as happy as a sand-boy, but I have to see all kinds of inane things being done. I know Dobbs is a rogue, and is an adept at cunning and lining his own nest, but the mother implores me to keep worries from the governor, and he, poor chap, thinks that Dobbs is an angel of goodness, and tells me that I'm not to do a thing unless he agrees. I'd chuck it all to-morrow except for the mother. I'm wasting my days, and doing no good."