“I suppose it’s inevitable to some extent. We must do our best to hold on to the little that is left us.... If he ... if he comes through it safely, as we pray that he may, perhaps he will come all back to us.... Perhaps,” she said, following up a side thought, “it is nature’s way of softening the blow if he should not come back to us. The parting is beginning even now.” “Hmph!” grunted Mr Dare resentfully. “He’s getting out of hand, that’s certain. I asked him to see to something the other day ... I really forget what it was,--some small thing that he’d have done in a moment two months ago,--and he simply let it slide,--never gave it another thought apparently----” “Boys are very thoughtless when their minds are full of their own concerns. I expect he just forgot all about it.” “That doesn’t make it any easier to bear.” “I know. It only explains it perhaps.” “And I’m beginning to doubt if he’ll ever settle down to ordinary work again. He has never been so keen on anything in his life before. I don’t understand it. Where does he get it from?” “It’s partly boyish love of adventure, and partly, I don’t doubt, real feeling that every man is needed, and when so many are going he wouldn’t be one to stop behind. We will give him credit for that. But, indeed, it is the last thing in the world I would have desired for him.” “Or I,” said Mr Dare, with a sigh. The change in their relationship manifested itself in many little ways,--quite trifling some of them, but to Mr Dare’s already bruised and sensitive feelings none the less galling. The frank confidences of boyhood, which kept back nothing, were gone. Beyond the bare statement that they had done a route march to Richmond or Hampstead, or had been mouching about Head-Quarters all day, or playing about in Hyde Park, even his mother’s interested attempts to draw him out came to little. His manner at times seemed to hint that it would be waste of time on his part to enter into the details they would so have enjoyed hearing, since, being mere civilians, they could not possibly understand purely military matters. When, occasionally, by some lucky chance, his Company was dismissed earlier than usual, if he did not stop in town to go to a theatre or music-hall with some of his fellows, he would rush in for a meal and off again almost before he had swallowed it, to call on this one or that one where he evidently found more congenial company than at home. If they all happened to meet outside, at Oakdene or elsewhere, they would find him in the highest of spirits, reeling off merry yarns of their doings en route or at Head-Quarters, and they felt a little sore that all this brighter side of him should be kept for foreign consumption when the home market was pining for it. “Have we failed in any way in our duty to him?” grumbled Mr Dare, after one such evening at Oakdene, as he and Mrs Dare went along together to their own house, which had never felt so lonely since they came to it.