Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next morning, and Mrs. Brent came with her, as Mrs. Grant had anticipated. But apparently they each wanted to get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted Mrs. Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone with you. I wonder if you’d spare Jane from her lessons to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that Harry built with the children. I’ve been telling her about it and she said she’d like to see it." Sidney laughed. "I don’t want to be in the way," she said, "and I’d like to have a walk with Jane, if she can be spared." Jane was fetched. She received Mrs. Brent’s effusive greeting with unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over very critically when she was introduced to her. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she went off with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may have been because she was relieved at getting off the rest of the morning’s lessons. The two girls set out across the garden, where the Vicarage baby, now getting on for three, was asleep under a tree, as before. They stopped to look at it, and Sidney behaved in such a way as to give Jane a good opinion of her. "She’s a darling," she said, as they went on. "I do hope she’ll be awake when we come back. I love to hear them talk at that age, don’t you?" Jane said she did, and recounted specimens of the Vicarage baby’s wit, over which they both laughed freely. They were good friends by the time they reached the log cabin. Jane unlocked the door and waited for admiration, which was given. "I’ve kept it very tidy and clean ever since Harry went away," she said, looking solemnly at Sidney. "I hope he won’t have got too old to like it. He wrote to me, you know, to say he was coming back, and he mentioned the log cabin. I expect he’ll be pleased to see it again." There was half an appeal in her voice. Sidney looked at her quickly. "I’m quite sure he will," she said. "He’s not so very old, after all—just as old as I am, in fact, and I’m not a bit too old to appreciate it." "Ah, but the war may have made a great difference in him." "It doesn’t make as much as you’d think." She hesitated for a moment, and said: "I know a man who has been through it all from the beginning. He enlisted as Harry did, and had a rough time of it at first. He’s been wounded too—rather badly. But he’s much the same as he was before." Jane looked at her. "You knew Harry when he was little, didn’t you?" she asked. "We only knew him first three years ago. He seemed old then to me and my brother, but he was only sixteen." "Let’s sit down somewhere and I’ll tell you all about it," said Sidney. "I don’t think I want to walk any more, unless you do."