"She's not herself. She's not happy. She's worrying about something." "_You're_ worrying, father," Falk said, "that's what's the matter. _She's_ just the same. You've been allowing yourself to worry about everything. Mother's all right." And didn't he know, in his own secret heart, that she wasn't? Brandon shook his head. "You may he right. All the same----" Falk said slowly: "Father, what would you say if I went up to London?" This was a close approach to the subject of their quarrel of the other evening. "When? What for?" "Oh, at once--to get something to do." "No, not now. After the summer we might talk of it." He spoke with utter decision, as he had always done to Falk, as though he were five years old and could naturally know nothing about life. "But, father--don't you think it's bad for me, hanging round here doing nothing?" Brandon got up, went across to the little ladder, hesitated a moment, then climbed up. "I've had this picture twenty years," he said, "and it's never hung straight yet." "No, but, father," said Falk, coming across to him, "I'm a man now, not a boy. I can't hang about any longer--I can't really." "We'll talk about it in the autumn," said Brandon, humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers," as he always did, a little out of tune. "I've got to earn my own living, haven't I?" said Falk. "There!" said Brandon, stepping back a little, so that he nearly overbalanced. "_That's_ better. But it won't stay like that for five minutes. It never does." He climbed down again, his face rosy with his exertions. "You leave it to me, Falk," he said, nodding his head. "I've got plans for you." A sudden sense of the contrast between Ronder and his father smote Falk. His father! What an infant! How helpless against that other! Moved by the strangest mixture of tenderness, regret, pity, he did what he had never in all his life before dreamed of doing, what he would have died of shame for doing, had any one else been there--put his hands on his father's shoulders and kissed him lightly on his cheek. He laughed as he did so, to carry off his embarrassment. "I don't hold myself bound, you know, father," he said. "I shall go off just when I want to." But Brandon was too deeply confused by his son's action to hear the words. He felt a strange, most idiotic impulse to hug his son; to place himself well out of danger, he moved back to the window, humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers." He looked out upon the Green. "There are two of those choir-boys on the grass again," he said. "If Ryle doesn't keep them in better order, I'll let him know what I think of him. He's always promising and never does anything." The last talk of their lives alone together was ended. * * * * *