I

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      The rain, slanting and silver, drove lightly across the terrace and down the grassy hollows of the park where nettles and docks and bramble bushes grew freely amongst the clumps of yellow gorse.

      General Levallois stood leaning on his two sticks under the portico that jutted out beyond the garden door of Coombe and spoke to his sister, although gazing away from her as he did so.

      "Better have the tennis-court dug over, I suppose."

      "I thought we wouldn't, Reggie. We've dug up the paddock, and the top field, and those other two and the old rose garden. Surely we can keep the tennis-court."

      "My dear girl, who do you think is ever going to play tennis here again?"

      "The children," said Valentine Arbell.

      Her voice died away into silence, as though she foresaw the General's reply before he spoke it.

      "What children?" he demanded derisively.

      What children indeed.

      Primrose was three-and-twenty and even before the war had never, once her school-days were over, wished to spend her time at home.

      Jessica was seventeen and a half and was waiting to be called up for the W.A.A.F.

      She would be gone long before summer came again.

      Valentine Arbell had never had a son.

      "I suppose you're right," she acknowledged with the gentle Edwardian courtesy of tone and manner that betrayed her years far more surely than did her appearance. "It would hardly be worth while to keep up the poor old tennis-court for one's possible grandchildren."

      She smiled as she spoke and it would have taken someone more observant, and far more interested in human reactions, than was the General to notice the real gravity—a kind of permanent, incredulous sadness—of her face.

      "Grandchildren!" ejaculated the General. "You aren't counting on anything of that sort from Primrose, I imagine, and as for young Jess, I hope she's a long way from thinking of such nonsense as marriage with any of those shockin' fellers she romps round with."

      "I'm sure she is, Reggie. Anyhow, none of them are in earnest. They're all much too young to marry."

      "That doesn't stop 'em, nowadays. And they aren't necessarily thinking of marrying either, but I suppose Jess knows what's what, like the rest of the girls. What about coming in, old girl? It's turning wet."

      It had turned wet long ago. Small puddles had formed on the gravel beneath their feet, and the blue distant hills and the square tower of St. Martin's church rising from the town in the valley below were all obscured by mist.

      "Come on in," repeated the General, shuffling slowly round on his sticks.

      "I must see to the hens. I'll come through the house and get my gum-boots."

      They