“I got seven shillings and sixpence for my poem,” he says good-temperedly. “And as for the battle-field, let us hope that my legs--they are good long ones--will carry me back unpeppered to your arms.” CHAPTER IV Lavinia tries to frown, but the whimsical way in which her cousin utters his disgraceful aspiration, coupled with her conviction that, if put to the test, he would prove how little his claim to consummate cowardice was worth, sends her into the dining-room with a smile on her face. The tone in which Sir George asks her what the joke is at once extinguishes it. “Nothing worth repeating,” she answers, grave, though suddenly. “That means that I am not worth repeating it to!” he rejoins, with an injured look, and pushing away the dish that is being offered him. “Won’t you try it?” she asks persuasively. “They are eggs dressed according to the recipe Lang got from the _chef_ at the Carlton.” He shakes his head. “I can’t understand any one having an appetite when they have been penned up in the house all the morning.” Each of the three persons present, and probably the servants too, know that the remark is aimed at Rupert, whose sedentary habits are one of his father’s chiefest grievances against him. It is a besetting sin of the outdoor members of a family to look upon the indoorness of the indoor as a crime against themselves. But for once Rupert’s conscience is clear. “Were not you out, sir?” he asks pleasantly. “How did that come about? In spite of the sting in the air, one could quite realize that spring is only just round the corner.” “I was occupied,” replies Sir George, briefly, not lifting the eyes overhung by lowering brows to his son’s face from his own empty plate. Both young people know what his occupation has been--the inditing, by a slow penman, of an infinitely difficult letter of thanks to the unknown soldier who had written to tell him of his dead first-born’s last moments, and the tearing wider of his own yawning wound in the process. There is a respectful silence; Lavinia regretting her smile, and Rupert his question.