Thereafter for some weeks Loring's letters continued to come with fair regularity, but there were times when he had no opportunity of writing, and I had no difficulty in understanding Violet's self-denying ordinance. We had two or three scares in the course of May and June—unexplained periods of time when no word came. Then a hurried scrawl would tell us that Loring had just come out of the trenches and was resting in billets behind the lines—"no time to write the last day or two, and no news even if the censor let it through. You know much more about the war than we do." And then we could all breathe more freely.
One such interval of suspense came to an end on June the 25th. I remember the date, if for no other reason, because it was my uncle's birthday. He had ordered his will to be sent round from the solicitor's and spent several hours, pencil in hand, drafting alterations and working out elaborate calculations in the margin. After dinner he returned to his task, and I was settling down to letter-writing when he suddenly said:
"Will you feel aggrieved, George, if I leave you out of this thing?"
"Not in the least," I said. "As I never expected——"
"Oh, nonsense! We've lived together for years, and I never could find anyone to do that before. They're all afraid of me, think I'm going to bite their heads off. I had put you down for everything and, if you think you're being shabbily treated, I won't alter the thing."
"I've really got as much as I need," I answered.
He nodded without looking up.
"Then the books and oddments will come to you, and the money will go to David."
"He'll refuse it, Bertrand," I said.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders. "He must please himself—as I am pleasing myself. Other things apart, I couldn't die and leave his father's son.... George, I'm not comfortable about the boy."