He straightened his shoulder as though defying somebody. Yet there was something appealing, and, as it were, boyish, in the defiance. The man's patriotic conscience could be felt struggling with his dilettantism. Sarratt suddenly liked him.
'No, indeed,' he said heartily. 'Why shouldn't you?' 'It's when one thinks of your job, one feels a brute to be doing anything one likes.'
'Well, you'd be doing the same job if you could. That's all right!' said
Sarratt smiling.
It was curious how in a few minutes the young officer had come to seem the older and more responsible of the two men. Yet Farrell was clearly his senior by some ten or fifteen years. Instinctively Nelly moved nearer to George. She liked to feel how easily he could hold his own with great people, who made her feel nervous. For she understood from Mrs. Weston that the Farrells were very great people indeed, as to money and county position, and that kind of thing.
Sarratt took his visitor downstairs, and returned, laughing to himself.
'Well, darling, I've promised we'll go to his cottage one day this week. You've to let him know. He's an odd fellow! Reminds me of that story of the young Don at Cambridge who spent all the time he could spare from neglecting his duties in adorning his person. And yet that doesn't hit it quite either. For I don't suppose he does spend much time in adorning his person. He doesn't want it. He's such a splendid looking chap to begin with. But I'm sure his duties have a poor time! Why, he told me—me, an utter stranger!—as we went downstairs—that being a landowner was the most boring trade in the world. He hated his tenants, and turned all the bother of them over to his agents. "But they don't hate me"—he said—"because I don't put the screw on. I'm rich enough without." By Jove, he's a queer specimen!'
And Sarratt laughed out, remembering some further items of the conversation on the stairs.
'Whom are you discussing?' said a cold voice in the background.
It was Bridget Cookson's voice, and the husband and wife turned to greet her. The day was balmy—June at its best. But Bridget as she came in had the look of someone rasped with east wind. Nelly noticed too that since her marriage, Bridget had developed an odd habit of not looking her—or George—straight in the face. She looked sideways, as though determined to avoid the mere sight of their youth and happiness. 'Is she going to make a quarrel of it all our lives?' thought Nelly impatiently. 'And when George is so nice to her! How can she be so silly!'
'We were talking about our visitor who has just left,' said Sarratt, clearing a chair for his sister-in-law. 'Ah, you came from the other direction, you just missed him.'