Ever After by Elswyth Thane Page B

backward still. Pale primroses starred the roadsides, and wood anemones and daffodils showed under the trees. The weather had been unsettled and cool, with sharp showers, but the sun was setting red and the Major said it would be fine tomorrow.
    The far horizon was the vast parapet of the wold, but the village of Upper Briarly lay snug beside the river at the foot of a wooded slope. No Briarly could well be lower, so it was the only one, and the clear cold stream ran right down the middle of the single street, dividing it into two. Low green banks sloped to the water’s edge on either side, and a low stone bridge flung its triple arch across just above where the old ford was. Trout lay idle in full view against the clean gravel bottom, their noses upstream. Beyond the bridge four white ducks rode serenely on the water while others preened themselves on the grassy bank. The old grey village houses faced each other across the broad thoroughfare. Vines garlanded their narrow mullioned windows, wallflowers and forget-me-nots bloomed at their feet. The gables were small and sharp and capriciously placed in the steep slate roofs. A child in a clean white pinafore looked out of a cottage door as the carriage passed, and waved, and they all waved back.
    A mile the other side of the village they could see at a distance a great colonnaded Georgian mansion set on a low hillside above the river, with acres of lawns running down to the water. The Major pointed it out as the favourite country seat of Lord Enstone, and said the Earl was in residence with his family. “I had one of the boys with me at Firket,” he went on. “The third son, I think he is. Led his wing with great dash and got a spear in the wrist. Lucky not to lose his arm, but it wasn’t bad enough even to get him sick leave to England. Lord Enstone is a great old boy himself, one of the very best. They’ll come to call while you’re here, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    “Jolly,” said Virginia. “What is his wife like?”
    “She’s been dead for years, I can hardly remember her. It’s a largish family, rather scattered now. Lord Alwyn, the eldest son, lives here at the Hall, being a bachelor—he’s very keen on hunting. And there’s a younger boy, down from London for Easter—the onethat’s reading for the Bar. There is also a remarkably beautiful daughter,” he observed for Bracken’s benefit.
    “Do you know the Earl well?” asked Sue, impressed.
    “Oh,
rather
, he used to command my regiment! Retired now, of course, but still going strong. I dined there last night, as a matter of fact. Always do, when I’m here. He and Aunt Sophie were cronies, so he’s interested in what becomes of the house, you know. Just a bit stuffy at the idea of Americans having it, but I fixed that, I think!” He smiled round at them all, amused, and added to Bracken, “You’ll find him interesting, if you can get him talking. He’s convinced we’re for it in South Africa, now that the Balkans have boiled over. Greece hasn’t a hope, I’m afraid.”
    As a journalist, Bracken had been reluctant to leave London even for a day now that news had begun to trickle in from the Thessalian frontier. Turkish ships had touched oft the war by firing on Greek ships at Prevesa, and the Turkish Army was advancing through heavy fighting towards Larissa, which was believed to have fallen by now. The Albanian troops around Janina had revolted against their Turkish masters, and the Greek fleet might attack Salonika any day. But the European Concert of Powers, dominated by the Kaiser and the Czar, was blockading Crete in a wrong-headed attempt to let the Balkans fight it out among themselves. There was an uneasy feeling in London that it lacked only an incident now to bring on the general European war which everyone had begun to dread without being able to see why it should seem so inevitable in an enlightened age like the present. It was easy to blame the Balkans, a notoriously contentious