For the next three days, Nicholas, very serious and earnest, shut himself up in his workshop at the bottom of the orchard and laboured there, putting the last touches to the final, perfect, authoritative form of the Moving Fortress, the joint creation of his brain and Drayton's, the only experiment that had survived the repeated onslaughts of the Major's criticism. The new model was three times the size of the lost original; it was less like a battleship and more like a racing-car and a destroyer. It was his and Drayton's last word on the subject of armaments. It was going to the War Office, this time, addressed to the right person, and accompanied by all sorts of protective introductions, and Drayton blasting its way before it with his new explosive. In those three days Nick found an immense distraction in his Moving Fortress. It also served to blind his family to his real intentions. He knew that his real intentions could not be kept from them very long. Meanwhile the idea that he was working on something made them happy. When Frances saw him in his overalls she smiled and said: "Nicky's got _his_ job, anyhow." John came and looked at him through the window of the workshop and laughed. "Good old Nicky," he said. "Doing his bit!" In those three days John went about with an air of agreeable excitement. Or you came upon him sitting in solitary places like the dining-room, lost in happy thought. Michael said of him that he was unctuous. He exuded a secret joy and satisfaction. John had acquired a sudden remarkable maturity. He shone on each member of his family with benevolence and affection, as if he were its protector and consoler, and about to confer on it some tremendous benefit. "Look at Don-Don," Michael said. "The bloodthirsty little brute. He's positively enjoying the War." "You might leave me alone," said Don-Don. "I shan't have it to enjoy for long." He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in four months. Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress. He was interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky's that was so unlike his own. Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike? He, too, was aiming at an art as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky's, as naked of all blazonry and decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest, most perfect adjustment of means to ends. And Anthony was proud of that hidden wonder locked behind the door of the workshop in the orchard. He realized that his son Nicholas had taken part in a great and important thing. He was prouder of Nicholas than he had been of Michael. And Michael knew it. Nicky's brains could be used for the service of his country.