“Oh, no! I am sure I could not be much of a farmer.”

“Could not because you would not! If I were your mother, I would insist on one of you staying at home and running the place.”

“Ernest is thinking of coming back, giving up engineering and trying intensive farming on Chatsworth.”

“Ernest, indeed! And why should he have[55] wasted all these years in some other profession if he means to farm?”

[55]

“Well, you see,” said Kent very patiently because of the pressure he felt from his mother’s gentle hand, “farming takes money and there wasn’t any money. Ernest always did want to farm, but it was necessary for him to make some money first. Now he has saved and invested and has something to put in the land, and he is devoutly hoping to get out more than he puts in.”

“If putting something in the land means expensive machinery, I can tell him now that he will waste money buying it. But there is no use in telling Ernest anything—he is exactly like Sue: very quiet, does not answer back when his elders and betters address him, but, like Sue, goes his own way. Sue is very headstrong and simply twists my husband’s nephew around her finger. I was very much disappointed in Cyrus Clay. I thought he had more backbone.”

Sue Brown, now Mrs. Cyrus Clay, had been the one member of the Brown family who always[56] got on with the stern Aunt Clay; and Kent and his mother were sorry to hear the old lady express any criticism of Sue. It seemed that Sue had done nothing more serious than to persuade Cyrus to join the Country Club, but it was against Mrs. Sarah Clay’s wishes, and anything that opposed her was headstrong and consequently wicked.

[56]

“But to return to you——” Kent let a sigh escape him as he had hoped he had eluded further catechism, “what are you going to do now?”

“Well, to-night I go back to New York, and day after to-morrow I take a French steamer for Havre.”

“Havre! Are you crazy?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do in France with this war going on?”

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