Upstairs in their bedroom, John threw open a window and leaned out into the night. The air was warm, and a full moon hung low over the elm trees at the bottom of the garden, throwing their long shadows across the lawns. The distant woods, black and distinct, were silhouetted on the hills; there was a great silence over everything. The moon would look just like that peering over the gorge at Amasia. He wondered what his father was doing at that moment, and whether he knew how happy he was. Probably he was smoking his last cigarette on the verandah, watching the stream as it ran and flashed along its stony bed; perhaps the night was not silent like this, but full of the droning of the _saz_. And Ali?--he would be fast asleep, tired after a long day in the sun. Dear old Ali, how he longed to have him with him, to show him this wonderful English house, and have him hear Teddie talk--how he would stare at Teddie! "I say, Scissors, how long are you going to hang out of that window?" It was Marsh, tooth-brush in hand, already in his pyjamas. "I'll bet I know your thoughts." "You don't." "I do--you're thinking about another place the moon hangs over and what everybody's doing there." "How did you know?" Marsh laughed delightedly at the confirmation of his guess. "Easy--when you turned just now you'd got the East in your eyes." "The East--what do you mean?" "Well, you look a bit Eastern at times. I thought so the first time I saw you, but you looked very much so just now, just as I imagine Lindon saw you." "Lindon--" John gulped at the name--"saw me? What did he tell you?" "Oh, he was telling us one day how you fainted when he played the _Drum Polonaise_--and how queer you looked at him just before you went. By the way, I don't think I ever told you Lindon lives near here." The days slipped by at the Vicarage. Indeed, there was so little to do and yet they were so industriously idle that the day was over before all that was planned had been accomplished. John had been at the Vicarage just a week, when, one sunshiny Saturday morning, the trap came round to the door, with its well-groomed pony and shining harness, at which Marsh had laboured for an hour the previous evening with a bottle of polish--and the promise of half a crown. Mrs. Marsh and John and Teddie got in, the latter taking the reins, and they clattered merrily out of the courtyard, down the village street, where the little boys gaped, and the women in the doors curtseyed, out on to the highway stretching away beneath an avenue of over-reaching elms. They were bound for the market town of Loughboro, on a shopping expedition. "There's nothing worth buying there," said Marsh, "which is the reason for the Mater's regular visit. She drags me round in the trap while she looks in every window. There's nothing to see and less to do." "There's the Theatre, dear."