"We hadn't a very amicable luncheon to-day," said the Major with a short laugh. He looked round the cosy firelit room, and at the pretty bewitching little woman before him, and he contrasted it with the big dining-room at home, and the Admiral's politics. He saw Sidney linking her arm in her father's, and going off to the study with him after dinner and throwing a laughing word at him over her shoulder: "Now, Uncle Ted, don't shut yourself up the whole evening in your workshop. And don't burn it to the ground, for I know you have a nap over your pipe." The words of Mrs. Norman rang in his ears: 'Three in family is rather an awkward number—one invariably goes to the wall.' Why should he trudge home to make the outside third, when here was one who wanted, who appreciated, him? Mrs. Norman saw his hesitation. "Now you're going to say 'Yes.' I won't be refused." She pulled her bell. The maid appeared. "Major Urquhart is staying to supper," she said. And the Major sat down again, with a smile and a shake of his head, but relief plainly discernible in his face. "They won't miss me," he said. "They never wait, for they say I'm always late." "Do tell me what happened at lunch. That is, if it is not very inquisitive," Mrs. Norman said, re-seating herself in an easy chair opposite to him and stretching out her slender satin-slippered foot upon the fender. "Oh, it was a tirade of my brother's against timber cutting. He refused to have that old elm touched!" "The one that blocks that exquisite view? Oh, what an old duffer he is! Why don't you insist a little more upon your rights, Major? You are too good-natured, too easygoing. You have allowed your brother for so long to think of the house as his that he is an absolute tyrant regarding it." "Well, you know," the Major said, uneasily twisting himself in his chair, "it is his virtually—he paid me a big sum, as I told you." "Don't tell me any more," said Mrs. Norman impatiently, tapping her foot on the ground. "It is Jacob and Esau over again; making you sell your birthright! I don't mean to liken you to Esau, but I think the Admiral intensely mean in taking advantage of a young soldier's difficulties! Could he not have helped you out of those difficulties without making such a bargain? It would have been only brotherly to do it." "I must say that I proposed it," said Major Urquhart. "You see, I was a gay young dog, had run through a lot—ah, well, best not talk about it."