"He has certainly altered," said Mrs. Grant. "He goes his own way as one would hardly have expected of him in some respects. I don’t know why he should have wanted to be with Mr. Wilbraham for a week before he went to France. Poor Mrs. Brent was rather sad about it, especially when he wrote to say that he was not coming down again." "And now she’s gone posting up to London to get hold of him. I’ve no patience with Mrs. Brent. She has greatly deteriorated. Well, I must be getting on with my work. I shall very soon be ready to make a start on the first chapter." Jane had been very subdued in demeanour since Sidney and Harry had both departed, and frequently sought her mother’s company. She came to her this morning, when her lessons were done, and sat with her in the garden as she worked. "Did father say that there was going to be a great attack on the Germans soon?" she asked, after a little desultory conversation. "It has been expected for some time. I suppose it can’t be long before it comes now." "I suppose that’s why Harry’s leave has been cut short. Will there be a great many of our people killed, mother?" "I’m afraid so, dear." "Harry might be," said Jane. "He’s very brave." "You mustn’t let yourself dwell on that, darling. He has been spared so far." "Did you know he had been wounded?" Mrs. Grant looked at her in surprise. "Not seriously," she said. "Sidney and I both think he was, though he wouldn’t tell us, and said we weren’t to talk about it. Have you noticed he always keeps his sleeve buttoned when he’s playing tennis?" Mrs. Grant hadn’t noticed particularly, but said that she remembered now that he did. "Well, he’s got an awful great scar in his arm. We saw it once by accident. A Turk did it with a bayonet. When we found out, he did tell us a little, and about the time he was in hospital. He told us about an orderly who had been frightfully good to him, and said he saved his life when he was very ill, by nursing him all the time. He liked to talk about him; his name was Tom Weller. Sidney thought he couldn’t have been so ill just from a wound in the arm, and then he said he’d had a little shell wound in the body, but he wouldn’t tell us any more. We think it must have been a serious one. We found out afterwards that he didn’t go to hospital for his bayonet wound at all." Mrs. Grant was conscious of a feeling of surprise and some discomfort. She knew that Harry was not likely to fail in any of a young man’s courageous work, and yet she had thought of him as having got off lightly, except in the hardships of a trooper’s life. And that he had never mentioned even the actions in which he had been wounded seemed so to accentuate the division that he had made between himself and those who loved him. He might have died and they would have known nothing. Apparently he had been very near to death. She wondered whether Jane had any theory to account for his unusual reticence about himself.