The girls came proudly, if unwillingly. They knew the scowling young man didn't need them, might not want them indeed. But they were a part of Farvie, and he'd got to accept them until they found out, at least, how safe Farvie was going to be in his hands. Jeffrey wasn't thinking of them at all. He was accepting them, but they hadn't any share in his perspective. Lydia felt they were the merest little dots there. She giggled, one brief note to herself, and then sobered. She was as likely to laugh as to fume, and it began to seem very funny to her that in this drama of The Prisoner's Return she and Anne were barely to have speaking parts. The colonel sat in his armchair at the orchard window, and Jeffrey stood by the mantel and fingered a vase. Lydia, for the first time seeing his hands with a recognising eye, was shocked by them. They were not gentleman's hands, she thought. They were worn, and had calloused stains and ill-kept nails. "I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible what I mean to do," he said, addressing his father. "I'm glad you've got your plans," his father said. "I've tried to make some, but I couldn't--couldn't." "I want first to find out just how things are here," said Jeffrey. "I want to know how much you've got to live on, and whether these girls have anything, and whether they want to stay on with you or whether they're doing it because--" Jeffrey now had a choking sense of emotions too big for him--"because there's no other way out." "Do you mean," said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand could stop her, "you want us to leave Farvie?" The colonel looked up with a beseeching air. "Good God, no!" said Jeffrey irritably. "I only want to know the state of things here. So I can tell what to do." The colonel had got hold of himself, and straightened in his chair. The girls knew that motion. It meant, "Come, come, you derelict old body. Get into form." "I've tried to write you fully," he said. "I hoped I gave you a--a picture of the way we lived." "You did. You have," said Jeffrey, still with that air of getting nowhere and being greatly irritated by it. "But how could I know how much these girls are sacrificing?" "Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on the point of another explosion when Jeffrey himself held up his hand to her. "Wait," he said. "Let me think. I don't know how to get on with people. They only make me mad." That put a different face on it. Anne knew what he meant. Here he was, he for whom they had meant to erect arches of welcome, floored in a moment by the perplexities of family life. "Of course," said Anne. She often said "of course" to show her sympathy. "You tell it your own way." "Ah!" said Jeffrey, with a breath of gratitude. "Now you're talking. Don't you see----" he faced Anne as the only person present whose emotions weren't likely to get the upper hand----"don't you see I've got to know how father's fixed before I make any plans for myself?"