"Well, you know, you did invite me in August," Arthur reminded him.
"And when are you going away?" (This was Buff's favourite formula with guests, and he could never be made to see that it would be prettier if he said, "How long can you stay?")
Arthur shook hands with Elizabeth and her father, and replied:
"I'm going away this evening as ever was. It sounds absurd," in answer to Elizabeth's exclamation, "but I must be back in London to-morrow morning. I had no notion when I might have a chance of seeing you all again, so I just came off when I had a free day."
"Dear me!" said Mr. Seton. "You young people are like Ariel or Puck, the way you fly about."
"Oh! is it to be the Flying Corps?" asked Elizabeth.
"No—worse luck! Pilled for my eyesight. But I'm passed for the infantry, and to-morrow I enter the Artists' Rifles. I may get a commission and go to France quite soon."
Ellen came in with a fresh supply of food, and breakfast was a prolonged meal; for the Setons had many questions to ask and Arthur had much to tell them.
"You're a godsend to us," Elizabeth told him, "for you remain normal. People here are all unstrung. The neighbours arrive in excited motorfuls, children and dogs and all, and we sit and knit, and drink tea and tell each other the most absurd tales. And rumours leap from end to end of the county, and we imagine we hear guns on the Forth—which isn't humanly possible—and people who have boys in the Navy are tortured with silly lies about sea-battles and the sinking of warships."
Before luncheon, Arthur was dragged out by the boys to admire their pets; but though they looked at such peaceful objects as rabbits, a jackdaw with a wooden leg, and the giant trout that lived in Prince Charlie's Well, all their talk was of battles. They wore sacking round their legs to look like putties, their belts were stuck full of weapons, and they yearned to shed blood. No one would have thought, to hear their bloodthirsty talk, that only that morning they had, all three, wept bitter tears because the sandy cat from the stables had killed a swallow.