"Your health?" Deane suggested politely.
"My health, and my ridiculously small pension," Mr. Sarsby answered. "I can't make out what the country is coming to. Years ago, pensions were altogether on a different scale. To-day, it seems to me that every government is always trying to shirk its obligations to those who go out and help to build up the empire."
This was Mr. Sarsby's favorite little speech, which he made regularly several times a week in the village, and once a year at a club dinner. Deane received it in sympathetic silence.
"Tell me how you spend your time, Miss Sinclair?" he asked. "You play golf, I think you told me."
"Oh! I do all the obvious things one has to do, living in such a place," she said. "I swim and I fish, I play golf and tennis when I can get any, and I sail a boat when I can borrow one. Those things are all sport to you, I suppose. When they become not a part of your life, but the whole of it, they are a dreary sort of pursuits."
"My niece is seldom satisfied," Mr. Sarsby said sharply.
"Why should I be?" she asked. "You, at least, have had your day. You have seen something of life, in however small a circle. I haven't! I dare say, after twenty years away, I might be content with these things. Life for you is simply a satisfactory thing or not according to whether you have beaten Colonel Forsitt or whether he has beaten you, whether you are heeling your mashie shots or laying them dead, holing your putts or leaving them short. You see, I haven't quite come to the stage when I find these things sufficient."
"At any rate," Mr. Sarsby remarked, with what he imagined was a dignified air, "there is no need to take a stranger into your confidence. Mr. Deane is scarcely interested."
"On the contrary," Deane answered, with a little bow. "But I thought you told me, Miss Sinclair, that you were probably leaving us before long."
"Oh, I hope so!" she replied. "My uncle was not a man to break his promise, and he did promise. I am expecting to hear now every day."