“_Our_ changes are all over, dear,” cooed the mother; “and now I am getting used to your size and your tan (you’re very brown, Georgie), I see you haven’t changed in the least. You’re exactly like the pater.” The father beamed on this man after his own heart,—“youngest major in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,”—and the butler listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war as it is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned. They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow of the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which is the only living green in the world. “Perfect! By Jove, it’s perfect!” Georgie was looking at the round-bosomed woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant boxes were ranged; and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred scents and sounds. Georgie felt his father’s arm tighten in his. “It’s not half bad—but _hodie mihi, cras tibi_, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if you haven’t one now, eh?” “You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven’t one.” “Not in all these years?” said the mother. “I hadn’t time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too.” “But you must have met hundreds in society—at balls, and so on?” “I’m like the Tenth, mummy: I don’t dance.” “Don’t dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then—backing other men’s bills?” said the father. “Oh, yes; I’ve done a little of that too; but you see, as things are now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night.” “Hmm!”—suspiciously. “It’s never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of housewarming for the people about, now you’ve come back. Unless you want to go straight up to town, dear?” “No. I don’t want anything better than this. Let’s sit still and enjoy ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look for it?” “Seeing I’ve been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should say there might be,” the father chuckled. “They’re reminding me in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now.” “Brutes!” “The pater doesn’t mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to make your home-coming a success; and you _do_ like it, don’t you?” “Perfect! Perfect! There’s no place like England—when you ’ve done your work.” “That’s the proper way to look at it, my son.”