She began the re-education of her children; finding them hopelessly backward in everything except parrot-knowledge. She gossiped with old man Tebbits, who sold her a piglet at the exact market-price of the day, provided her with milk and butter; but kept shut mouth about the delinquencies of “the Arlsfielders.” She entertained her father for a week-end, and her brother Jack—still only a Gunner Captain and rather disgruntled at having been transferred to a Kitchener battery—for half his leave. She superintended Fry’s greasing and oiling of the Crossley, which the Standard Oil Company’s price for petrol had put out of commission till “after the war”; and explored the country afoot. She got up at seven and went to bed at ten, living every minute of the fifteen wonderful hours. Towards the end of August, Francis Gordon arrived to stay for a week, while Prout engaged what he called a “female,” and got Glen Cottage ready for occupation. Patricia had not seen her cousin for two months; and the first sight of him, stepping carefully down from the hired trap, shocked her. It was not his physical infirmities she noticed at that first meeting, but his face. She remembered him a smooth-faced boy, she saw him now a middle-aged man. His hair had grayed at the temples; his eyes had lost their laughter. He walked easily enough, using only one stick; but he no longer held himself upright; his shoulders drooped as though he carried a burden on them. She led him to a deep chair in the hall; brought him tea; began to question him. “So they invalided you out after all.” “Yes. I could have got an office-job; but I wouldn’t take it.” “Why not?” “Frankly, Pat, I don’t know. Somehow or other, I feel done in. It wasn’t so bad in hospital, you see one had other”—he looked down at his legs—“cripples to talk to. But London. . . . No, I don’t think I could stick London. The streets, you know; and getting in and out of tubes. People jostle one.” “But what _are_ you going to do?” “Oh, write, I suppose.” The last sentence struck Patricia as the most hopeless words she had ever heard from human lips. She felt desperately sorry—yet furiously angry with him. She said to herself: “Here is a man who is almost whole. He has enough money to live on. He has brains. The one thing that he cares for in the world is literature, there is nothing to prevent him. . . .”