"Well," said the old man weightily, "war is a great clearer of the air. Don't trouble your heads any more about this matter till you come home again. If you both come, we must consider what is best to be done. If only one of you comes, it will need no discussion. If neither,"--he snuffed very deliberately, looking at them as if he saw them for the first, or was looking at them for the last, time--"then, as far as you are concerned, the matter is ended. When do you return?"
"To-morrow morning, sir. We could only get short leave."
"Then perhaps you will favour me with your company at dinner to-night. And Mr. Eager will perhaps bring Miss Gracie."
They would very much have preferred the simpler hospitality of Mrs. Jex's cottage, but could not well refuse. With Sir Denzil's words in their minds they could not but recognise that, for some of them, it might well be the last time they would all meet there.
They picked up Gracie by arrangement, and all went off down along for a quick walk round some of their old haunts.
"How well I remember my first sight of these flats!" said Eager, looking with great enjoyment at the tall, clean-made, upstanding figures striding by his side. Jim, he noticed, was rather the taller and certainly the more boyish-looking. Jack had a maturer air, which doubtless came of study. But both looked eminently soldierly and likely to give a good account of themselves. "You two were just little naked savages, and you stole all my clothes but one sock, and I thought I would have to go home clad only in a towel."
"They were good old times," said Jack. "But I'm mightily glad you came. What would we have grown up into if you hadn't?"
"Wild sand-boys," suggested Gracie.
"And what a sight you were, the first time we saw you!" laughed Jack: "in your little red bathing things, with your hair all flying, and your little arms and legs going like drumsticks--a perfect vision of delight."
"What a pity we can't always remain children!"