Jimmy’s spirits rose with a bound. He accepted the omen. This was the world as it really was, smiling and friendly, not grey, as he had fancied it. He had won. Nothing could alter that. What remained to be done was trivial. He wondered how he could ever have allowed it to weigh upon him. After a while he pushed the boat out of its shelter on to the glittering water, and seized the paddle. “We must be getting back,” he said. “I wonder what the time is? I wish we could stay out for ever. But it must be late. Molly!” “Yes?” “Whatever happens, you’ll break off this engagement with Dreever? Shall I tell him? I will if you like.” “No, I will. I’ll write him a note if I don’t see him before dinner.” Jimmy paddled on a few strokes. “It’s no good,” he said suddenly; “I can’t keep it in. Molly, do you mind if I sing a bar or two? I’ve got a beastly voice, but I’m feeling rather happy. I’ll stop as soon as I can.” He raised his voice discordantly. Covertly, from beneath the shade of her big hat, Molly watched him with troubled eyes. The sun had gone down behind the hills, and the water had ceased to glitter. There was a suggestion of chilliness in the air. The great mass of the castle frowned down upon them, dark and forbidding in the dim light. She shivered. ★ 20 ★ _A Lesson in Piquet_ Lord Dreever, meanwhile, having left the waterside, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make a reflective tour of the grounds. He felt aggrieved with the world. Molly’s desertion in the canoe with Jimmy did not trouble him. He had other sorrows. One is never at one’s best and sunniest when one has been forced by a ruthless uncle into abandoning the girl one loves and becoming engaged to another to whom one is indifferent. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one’s outlook on life in such circumstances. Moreover, Lord Dreever was not by nature an introspective young man, but, examining his position as he walked along, he found himself wondering whether it was not a little unheroic. He came to the conclusion that perhaps it was. Of course, Uncle Thomas could make it deucedly unpleasant for him if he kicked—that was the trouble. If only he had even, say, a couple of thousand a year of his own, he might make a fight for it. But, dash it! Uncle Tom could cut off supplies to such a frightful extent, if there was trouble, that he would have to go on living at Dreever indefinitely, without so much as a fearful quid to call his own. Imagination boggled at the prospect. In the summer and autumn, when there was shooting, his lordship was not indisposed to stay at the home of his fathers. But all the year round! Better a broken heart inside the radius than a sound one in the country in the winter. “But, by gad,” mused his lordship, “if I had as much as a couple—yes, dash it! even a couple of thousand a year, I’d chance it and ask Katie to marry me, dashed if I wouldn’t!”