Roger went round the netting till he found an opening and pushed through. His mother came to meet him, and put her arm round his shoulders. He pointed to his father, who was walking slowly away with bent head. "Don’t you think fardie looks rather lonely?" he asked. Lettice looked after her husband. "I don’t think he is lonely, sonnie: he has so many—other friends." But the boy was not convinced. Roger’s mother bowls uncommonly well, but he did not enjoy the cricket. He kept contrasting it with that of last year. Then father always played too, and one day mother bowled him clean, and there was great shouting and excitement. "It was jollier cricket then!" he reflected sadly. The elder Roger went and sat in the gun-room. He had to relight his cigar three times, and his reflections, although engrossing, did not seem pleasant. "Will she never understand," he muttered, "that a man may care and yet play the giddy, and that he may play the giddy and not care a damn? What an almighty fool I’ve been!" When the children had gone to bed Lettice went and sat in the newly arranged drawing-room. "It’s perfectly hideous!" she exclaimed; "I can’t sit here!" But she did sit there, staring at nothing for a good half-hour till the dressing-bell rang. In the evening she took up that very wise book, _On the Face of the Waters_, and read in what manner Kate Erleton had refused "her chance." When little Roger woke next morning he remembered that something very pleasant was to happen that day. He was going with his father to the riding-school in the town to see a pony, and on that pony, if it proved suitable, he was to go hunting next winter. As the full significance of this tremendous occurrence was brought home to him in the shape of a pair of new and very stiff gaiters, he felt equal to negotiating the very biggest bullfinch; which may account for what happened half an hour later, as he stood in the hall waiting for the dog-cart. The rain had come on again, heavy "Mayish rain," as Roger called it, but they didn’t mind about that. His father was standing in the doorway looking very big in a wide white macintosh. His mother ran downstairs with her own macintosh cape for the little boy. As she reached the bottom step, the elder Roger came back into the hall. Perkins, who had been in "father’s regiment" when father first joined, stood at the door with a rug over his arm, looking imperturbable as usual. Lettice stooped to kiss her little son as she buttoned the cape at his neck. He caught at her hands as they fumbled with the stiff button, and said loudly, "Kiss father too, mother dear, and wish us luck!" Perkins turned his head quickly, looking back into the hall. Lettice felt the small insistent hands upon her own, and heard her husband’s quick breathing just behind her. There flashed into her brain the thought that here and now was her "chance." She turned quickly and lifted up her small proud face towards her husband.