"Mr. Hayley will be busier than ever now."

"Yes, I suppose he will."

And then the two ladies, looking at one another,
smiled one of those funny little smiles which may
mean a great deal, or nothing at all.

James Hayley, the son of one of Mrs. Otway's first
cousins, was in the Foreign Office; and if he had an
inordinate opinion of himself and of his value to his
country, he was still a very good, steady fellow.
Lately he had fallen into the way of coming down to
Witanbury exceedingly often; but when doing so he
did not stay with the Otways, in their pretty house in
the Close, as would have been natural, and as would
also naturally have made his visits rather less frequent;
instead, he stayed in lodgings close to the gateway
which divided the Close from the town, and thus was
able to be at the Trellis House as much or as little
as he liked. It was generally much. Mrs. Otway
wondered whether the war would so far affect his
work as to keep him away from Witanbury this
summer. She rather hoped it would.

"I'm even more sorry than usual for Jervis Blake
today!" and this time there was a note of real kindness
in Miss Forsyth's voice. "I shouldn't be surprised
if he enlisted."

"Oh, I hope he won't do _that!"_ Mrs. Otway was
shocked at the suggestion. Jervis Blake was a person
for whom she had a good deal of tolerant affection.
He was quite an ordinary young man, and he had had
the quite ordinary bad luck of failing to pass successive
Army examinations. The news that he had
failed again had just become known to his friends,
and unluckily it was his last chance, as he was now

[[11]]

p010 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p011w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p012

v?