"Hullo," cried Buz, "where are you off to?"
"I'm going to practise drop-kicks . . . by myself," Grantly answered grumpily.
"Why can't I come? I could kick even if I can't use this beastly arm."
"No, it's too cold for you to stand about."
"Bosh; I can wrap myself in a railway rug if it comes to that."
"It needn't come to that. You go for a sharp walk or else take a book and amuse yourself. I must be off."
"Well you are a selfish curmudgeon," Buz exclaimed in real astonishment. "Why this sudden passion for solitude?"
Grantly banged the door in Buz's face, regardless of the warning cards, and set off to run. Buz opened the door and looked after him, noted the direction, nodded his head thrice and nipped upstairs to Grantly's room, where he abstracted his field-glasses from their case hanging on a peg behind the door. He hung them round his neck by the short black strap, tied a sweater over his shoulders, and went out by the side door in quite a different direction from that taken by his brother.
* * * * * *
Oblivious of the surgeon's strict injunctions that he was on no account to run or risk a fall of any kind, holding the glasses with his free hand so that they shouldn't drag on his neck, directly he was clear of the house he broke into the swinging steady trot that had won him the half-mile under fifteen in the last school sports; climbed two gates and jumped a ditch, finally arriving at the top of a small hill, the very highest point on the Manor property. From this eminence he surveyed the country round, and speedily, without the aid of the field-glasses, discerned his brother kicking a football well into the centre of the field, while the Liberal member for Marlehouse ran after it and tried somewhat feebly to kick it back.