"Yes. There's little Rogers. But even he's pretty rotten after Jerry." "He would be." "And that old ass Rawly says I'll be better this term without Jerrold. He kept on gassing about fighting your own battles and standing on your own feet. You never heard such stinking rot." "You're lucky it's Cheltenham," Jerrold said, "and not some other rotten hole. Dad and I'll go over on half-holidays and take you out. You and Anne." "You'll be at Cambridge." "Not till next year. And it isn't as if Anne wasn't there." "Grannie and Aunt Emily'll ask you every week. I've made them. It'll be a bit slow, but they're rather darlings." "Have they a piano?" Colin asked. "Yes. And they'll let you play on it all the time." Colin looked happier. But he didn't get his chill, and when the day came he had to go. Jerrold saw Anne off at Wyck station. "You'll look after Col-Col, won't you?" he said. "Write and tell me how he gets on." "I'll write every week." Jerrold was thoughtful. "After all, there's something in that idea of old Rawlings', that I'm bad for him. He's got to do without me." "So have I." "You're different. You'll stand it, if you've got to. Colin won't. And he doesn't chum up with the other chaps." "No. But think of me and all those awful girls--after you and Eliot" (she had forgotten Eliot's sulkiness) "and Uncle Robert. And Grannie and Aunt Emily after Auntie Adeline." "Well, I'm glad Col-Col'll have you sometimes." "So'm I... Oh, Jerrold, here's the beastly train." It drew up along the platform. Anne stood in her carriage, leaning out of the window to him. His hand was on the ledge. They looked at each other without speaking. The guard whistled. Carriage doors slammed one after another. The train moved forward. Jerrold ran alongside. "I say, you'll let Col-Col play on that piano?" Anne was gone. III ANNE AND JERROLD i "'Where have you been all the day, Rendal, my son? Where have you been all the day, my pretty one?...'" Five years had passed. It was August, nineteen ten. Anne had come again. She sat out on the terrace with Adeline, while Colin's song drifted out to them through the open window. It was her first day, the first time for three years. Anne's calendar was blank from nineteen seven to nineteen ten. When she was seventeen she had left Cheltenham and gone to live with Grandpapa Everitt at the Essex farm. Grandpapa Everitt wanted her more than Grandmamma Severn, who had Aunt Emily; so Anne had stayed with him all that time. She had spent it learning to farm and looking after Grandpapa on his bad days. For the last year of his life all his days had been bad. Now he was dead, dead three months ago, and Anne had the farm. She was going to train for five years under the man who had worked it for Grandpapa; after that she meant to manage it herself.