The solicitor glanced at him keenly, then he turned to the revolving chair before his desk and motioned his visitor to the one opposite.
“Tony again?” he questioned, as his visitor seated himself.
The clergyman waited a minute, twirling his soft hat about in his hands as he held it between his knees.
“Tony again!” he assented at last. “It isn't the lad's fault, Luke, I truly believe. He can't get a job that suits him. Those two years at the War played ruination with the young men just beginning life. Tony would make a good soldier. But he doesn't seem to fit in anywhere else.”
“Then why doesn't he enlist?” Luke Bechcombe snapped out.
“His mother,” Mr. Collyer said quietly. “She would never have a moment's peace.”
Luke Bechcombe pushed back his glasses and stared at his brother-in-law for a moment. Then he nodded his head slowly. The Rev. James Collyer's statement was true enough he knew—none better. Mrs. Collyer was his sister; the terrible anxiety of those last dreadful days of the Great War, when her only son had been reported wounded and missing for months, had played havoc with her heart. Tony Collyer had had a hot time of it in one of the prisoners' camps in Germany; he had been gassed as well as badly wounded, and he had come back a shadow of his old self. His mother had nursed him back to health and sanity, but the price had been the invalid couch that had stood ever since in the Rectory morning-room. No. Tony Collyer could never enlist in his mother's lifetime. The same applied to emigration. Tony must get a job at home, and England, the home of heroes, had no use for her heroes now.
There had been times when Tony envied those comrades of his whose graves lay in Flanders' soil. They, at any rate, had not lived to know that they were little better than nuisances in the land for which they had fought and died. He had had several jobs, but in every one of them he had been a square peg in a round hole. They had all been clerkships of one kind or another and Tony had hated them all. Nevertheless he had conscientiously done his best for some time. Latterly, however, Tony had taken to slacking. He had met with some of his old companions of the Great War and had spent more money than he could afford. Three times already his father had paid his debts, taxing his resources to the utmost to do so. Each time Tony had promised reformation and amendment, but each time the result had been the same. Small wonder that the rector's hair was rapidly whitening, that every day seemed to make new lines on his fresh-coloured, pleasant face.
His brother-in-law glanced at him sympathetically now.
“What is Tony doing just at present?”