But one thing it had done for him; it had killed in him the last vestiges of that absurd emotion he had had for her, an emotion which had always been so hopeless, and for that very reason had never become, and never would become, love. But he wanted to be friends. However much she had been the aggressor in the quarrel, however unfair, and unjust, and unkind she had been, still he was minded to write and say he was sorry, and would she please come to lunch and go on being friends. He turned into Soho Square, and went back to his rooms. There he found a letter from his editor telling him that his services on the _Daily Post_ would not be required after the end of May. It was not unexpected. The _Post_ was economising in its literary staff, and starting on him. It was very natural, even inevitable, that they should; for his reviewing lacked discrimination, and his interest in the Club had often made him careless about his own job. He threw the letter at Arnold, who had just come in. Arnold said, “I feared as much.” “What now, I wonder?” said Eddy, not caring particularly. Arnold looked at him thoughtfully. “Really, it’s very difficult. I don’t know.... You do so muddle things up, don’t you? I wish you’d learn to do only one job at once and stick to it.” Eddy said bitterly, “It won’t stick to me, unfortunately.” Arnold said, “If Uncle Wilfred would have you, would you come to us?” Eddy supposed he would. Only probably Uncle Wilfred wouldn’t have him. Later in the evening he got a telegram to say that his father had had a stroke, and could he come home at once. He caught a train at half-past eight, and was at Welchester by ten. CHAPTER XI. THE COUNTRY. The Dean was paralysed up the right side, his wife agitated and anxious, his daughter cross. “It’s absurd,” said Daphne to Eddy, the morning after his arrival. “Father’s no more sense than a baby. He insists on bothering about some article he hasn’t finished for the _Church Quarterly_ on the Synoptic Problem. As if one more like that mattered! The magazines are too full of them already.” But the Dean made it obvious to Eddy that it did matter, and induced him to find and decipher his rough notes for the end of the article, and write them out in proper form. He was so much better after an afternoon of that that the doctor said to Eddy, “How long can you stop at home?” “As long as I can be any use. I have just given up one job and haven’t begun another yet, so at present I am free.” “The longer you stay the better, both for your father and your mother,” the doctor said. “You can take a lot of strain off Mrs. Oliver. Miss Daphne’s very young--too young for much sick-nursing, I fancy; and the nurse can only do what nurses can do. He wants companionship, and someone who can do for him the sort of job you’ve been doing to-day.”