"I AM sorry the holidays are so nearly at an end," Lawrence Puttenham remarked one evening, as he strolled back to the Moat House with Eric. He was to return to London on the following day to spend a week at home with his own people before school re-opened. "I've had a really splendid time," he continued, "and I think we've licked the Crumleigh Cricket Club into shape, eh, Wallis?"
"Yes," Eric agreed, with a laugh, "and we've got on with the village boys very well on the whole, haven't we? I am sure Sam Dart, who certainly looked unfavourably on us both at first, was quite sorry to say good-bye to you to-night."
"Yes, I believe he was. I wonder if we two are at all likely to meet here another year. The Vicar said something yesterday about asking me to visit him again next summer. Do you think you'll be at the Moat House then?"
"I really can't say. We were asked for a year, and sometimes Uncle Jasper speaks as though we were settled here, but I don't know about that. Mother was saying to-day, Putty, how kind and attentive you've been to her all the time Joy's been ill at the Vicarage."
"Oh, nonsense! I did what I could in the way of running errands for her and so on, and took care to keep quiet in the house; but that's been all. I'm glad Joy is so much better, and well enough to be moved."
"Yes, she's to be brought home on Monday, so she and I will have a few days together before I go back to school. It's a bother about her hip—that it keeps her from walking, I mean."
"I suppose it will get well in time?" Lawrence Puttenham inquired.
"Oh, I suppose so," Eric replied, a faint shade of anxiety crossing his face. "You don't think there's any doubt about it, do you?"
"I never heard anyone say so," was the somewhat evasive answer.
Putty was accompanying his friend to the Moat House in order to say good-bye to Sir Jasper, whom, on their arrival, they found on the terrace with Celia. She had been reading the newspaper aloud, but the light had failed; the short September evening was drawing to a close, and she was very glad, for she had wearied of her task, a fact Sir Jasper had failed to notice.