Henry would not listen to them. His longing was to be with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian in London. Dublin made very little appeal to him, and the job of regenerating Ireland was so immense that it frightened him. "I haven't got a common ground with you people," he said to Marsh and Galway. "You're Catholic to start off with, and I'm like my father, I think the Catholic religion is a contemptible religion. And you're not interested in anything but Ireland and the Gaelic movement. I'm interested in everything!" "Don't you want to do _anything_ for Ireland then?" John Marsh had asked. "Oh, yes! I'll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote," he had replied. "I know what your end will be," Patrick Galway added in a sullen voice. "You'll become a Chelsea Nationalist ... willing to do anything for Ireland but live in it!" Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny-farthing politics! London for him! London and a sense of bigness, of wide ideas and the constant interplay of many minds! He would talk to his father about Gilbert's proposal. There would be all sorts of subjects to discuss with him, that and the question of an allowance and the question of a career.... The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and presently pulled up at the terminus. He descended from his carriage and called a jarvey who drove him across the city to the Northern Counties station where he took train again. It was late that night when he arrived at Ballymartin. THE SECOND CHAPTER 1 Mr. Quinn had become more absorbed in the Irish Agricultural Co-Operative Movement, and he used the home farm for experiments in scientific cultivation. His talk, when Henry returned home, was mainly about a theory of tillage which he called "continuous cropping," and it was with difficulty that Henry could persuade him to talk about Gilbert's proposal that he should join the household in Bloomsbury. "I'm glad you've come home, Henry," he said after breakfast on the morning following Henry's return. "This system of continuous cropping is splendid, but it wants careful attention. You've got to adjust it continually to circumstances ... you can't follow any rules about it ... and if you'll just stay here and help me with it, we'll be able to do wonders with the home farm!" Henry did not wish to settle in Ballymartin, at all events not for a long time. "I want to go to London, father!" he said. "London! What for?" Mr. Quinn exclaimed, and then before Henry could say why he wished to go to London, he added, "You'll have to settle on something, Henry. I always meant you to take over the estate fairly soon, to work things out with me. Don't you want to do that?" "Not particularly, father!" "Well, what's to become of you, then? Do you want to go into the Army? It's a bit late!..." "No, father!" "Or the Navy? But you should have gone to Osborne long ago if you wanted to do that!" Henry shook his head. "Well, what do you want to do. Are you thinkin' of the law?"