“You’ll justabout have to, sonny. I tell you this farm’s your job, saum as mine’s soldiering. I’m going to fight fur Worge, and you’ve got to back me up and see as Worge is kept going fur me to fight fur.” “I’ll do my best, surelye—but you must write, Tom, and maake me mind it all. Write and say, ‘This week you must drill the two-acre’—or ‘To-morrow’s the day to start thinning,’ or ‘Maake a strong furrer this frost,’ so’s I shan’t disremember the lot.” “I’ll send you a postcard at whiles, to kip you up to it; but I shan’t be here to see how things are going, so you’ll have to trust to your own gumption. And doan’t go agaunst faather when he’s sober, fur he’s a clever chap and knows wot he’s doing; but when he’s tight doan’t let him meddle, for he’s unaccountable contrary and ud pot a harvest just to spite the Government. As fur Juglery and Elphick, they’ve got no more sense nor roots, so doan’t you ever be asking wot to do of them.” Harry was impressed by all this counsel. But perhaps its real weight lay in Tom’s new glamour, his khaki uniform, his occasional jauntiness, his military slang and tales of camp life. He had always been fond of his brother and liked him for a good fellow; but now he went a step further, and admired him. There was something about this quiet, neat, efficient young soldier, which had been lacking in good-natured old Tom, with his dirty skin and sloppy corduroys. Without quite understanding what it was, or how it had come there, Harry was both sensible and envious of it. He felt that he would like to be a soldier too, wear khaki, carry mysterious tools, and have before him a dim, glorious adventure called France. But since these things were not to be, a kind of rudimentary hero-worship led him to make plans for “carrying on” at home. He would not disappoint this soldier brother, who had exalted his work on the farm by speaking of it as part of the adventure on which he was so much more glamorously engaged. He had never seen it in that light before—for that matter, neither had Tom. But now he would try to do his share—back Tom up, as he had said. Harry’s nature was more ardent than his brother’s, more romantic in its clay-thickened way, and on this ardour and romance Tom had unconsciously built. There was now a chance of his memory calling louder than Senlac Fair or the wood by Cade Street. 15