The war was only lately over, and youth in consequence was in a state that could only be described as “difficult.” Youth was touchy and arrogant, morbid and defiant ... and even the younger members of the young generation, those who would have gone to the war if the war had lasted longer, like the Maxwells, became slightly infected by the spirit of truculence towards mere elderliness, futile, ineffective, and powerless--now. So Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell were indulgent, because all parents were being indulgent. And they did not know that the underneath motive was fear, because they never probed for underneath motives. And at any rate, they were safe in assuming that the children had inherited the tradition of the thoroughly commonplace, in that they were never in the least likely to do anything “different” ... “different,” in the Maxwell parlance, standing for the “wrong” of our Puritan forefathers. Unless Bunny... Bunny, aged fourteen, with dark eyes that charmed, and a wayward tuft of hair sticking out rebelliously from the crest of his head, was a perpetual anxiety. He was always in a scrape, and always created an atmosphere of apprehension that his next scrape might be very much worse. Idle, popular, dare-devil Bunny ... handsome, mischievous Bunny ... Bunny whistling, and Bunny penitent.... Oh, the Colonies, certainly! But meanwhile he had his place in the picture of a family group. William idolized Bunny, and on his behalf broodingly resented Hal’s superior status. A stern-eyed child, William, and persistent, fair, and with a thick stubbiness to his eyelashes which seemed the right outward expression of an equally thick stubbiness in his character. He pushed Bunny’s claims whenever he could! but Hal--well, Hal was such a splendid big fellow, an athletic hero at his school, captain of the Cricket Eleven, and moderately intelligent into the bargain. And the eldest son. And everybody’s favourite, too; for although he was no beauty, with his large beaky nose and freckles, yet he had quiet pleasant ways, and an air of good-humoured and even, at times, whimsical authority ... his sisters could not defer to him enough, especially Nina.