"Come in to breakfast, and I'll go with you. I shall have to explain to him how it comes that I have had to disclose the whole matter to you." "The boys came down last night, Gracie," was the surprising news that met the Little Lady when she came down next morning. "The boys? Whatever for, Charlie? There isn't anything wrong with them, is there?" And the startled colour flooded her face and then left it white. "Nothing of the kind, dear. They wanted to see Sir Denzil on some family matters, and they arrived too late to go there last night, so they went to the inn." "You're sure they haven't been getting into trouble?" "Quite sure. They're coming in to breakfast. You'd better go and talk to Mrs. Jex about supplies. Hungry soldiers, you know." And Gracie flew to the commissariat department. "You dear boys!" was her greeting, when they came striding in, very tall and large in their undress uniforms. "What _have_ you been doing? Over-studying?--softening of the brain?"--to Jack. "Gambling?--and frivolling generally?"--to Jim. "Quite out," laughed Jack. "My brain was never better in its life, and Jim's pocket never so full. Mayn't a pair of hungry men come all the way from London to see you without being accused of such iniquities?" "It is nice to get such good reports from yourselves," laughed Gracie. "I wonder how long you can keep it up." "It depends upon circumstances," said Jack. "And what are the circumstances?" asked Gracie incautiously. "You're one," said Jack boldly. "Here's breakfast. Charlie gave me to understand you had had nothing to eat for a week." "Nothing half so good as this," said Jack, with an appreciative look at the cottage loaves and golden butter, and the great dish of ham and eggs Mrs. Jex had just brought in. "My! but yo' do look rare and big and bonny," said that estimable woman. "I do think I'll cook ye some more eggs." "Yes, do, Mrs. Jex," said Eager. "They don't get eggs like these in London." And so they got through breakfast; but Jim was the quietest of the party, and Gracie got it into her head that he was in some dreadful mess, in spite of what Charlie had said. And just before they started for Carne she got hold of him for a minute, and asked: "Jim, what's the trouble? Is it anything very bad?" "It's nothing we've done, Grace," he said, with so frank a look in his own anxious eyes that she could not doubt him. "Just some old family matters that have cropped up." And though she could not doubt his word, he was so unlike himself that she watched them go in a state of extreme puzzlement as to what could have sapped Jim's spirits to such an unusual extent.