The letters she received were few and scanty, for Peter was but a poor correspondent, and he made little comment on the explanatory letter regarding his father’s will which John and Mr. Crawley thought proper to send him.  The solicitor was justly indignant at Sir Peter’s neglect to reply to this carefully thought-out and faultlessly indited epistle.

“He is just a chip of the old block,” said Mr. Crawley.

But his mother divined that Peter was partly offended at his own utter exclusion from any share of responsibility, and partly too much occupied to give much attention to any matter outside his soldiering.  She said to herself that he was really too young to be troubled with business; and she began to believe, as the work at Barracombe advanced, that the results of so much planning and forethought must please him, after all.  The consolation of working in his interests was delightful to her.  Her days were filling almost miraculously, as it seemed to her, with new occupations, fresh hopes, and happier ideas, than the idle dreaming which was all that had hitherto been permitted to her.  John desired her help, or her suggestions, at every turn, and constantly consulted her taste.  Her artistic instinct for decoration was hardly less strong than his own, though infinitely less cultivated.  He sent her the most engrossing and delightful books to repair the omission, and he brought her plans and drawings, which he begged her to copy for him.  The days which had hung so heavily on her hands were scarcely long enough.

The careful restoration of the banqueting-hall necessitated new curtains and chair-covers.  Lady Mary looked doubtfully at John when this matter had been decided, and then at the upholstery of the drawing-rooms facing the south terrace.

The faded magenta silk, tarnished gilded mirrors, and gold-starred wall-paper which decorated these apartments had offended her eye for years.  John laughed at her hesitation, and advised her to consult her sisters-in-law on the subject; and this settled the question.

“They would choose bottle-green” she said, in horror; and she salved her conscience by paying for the redecoration of the drawing-rooms out of her own pocket.

John discovered that Lady Mary had never drawn a cheque in her life, and that Mr. Crawley’s lessons in the management of her own affairs filled her with as much awe as amusement.

* * * * *

So the old order changed and gave place to the new at Barracombe; and the summer grew to winter, and winter to summer again; and Peter did not return, as he might, with the corps in which he had the honour to serve.

Want of energy was not one of his defects; he was a strong, hardy young man, a fine horseman and a good shot, and eager to gain distinction for himself.  He passed into a fresh corps of newly raised Yeomanry, and went through the Winter Campaign of 1901, from April to September, without a scratch.  His mother implored him to come home; but Peter’s letters were contemptuous of danger.  If he were to be shot, plenty of better fellows than he had been done for, he wrote; and coming home to go to Oxford, or whatever his guardian might be pleased to order him to do, was not at all in his line, when he was really wanted elsewhere.