LATE AND SOON: A NOVEL & 8 SHORT STORIES. E. M. Delafield

      I

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      The rain, slanting and silver, drove lightly across the terrace and down the grassy hollows of the park where nettles and docks and bramble bushes grew freely amongst the clumps of yellow gorse.

      General Levallois stood leaning on his two sticks under the portico that jutted out beyond the garden door of Coombe and spoke to his sister, although gazing away from her as he did so.

      "Better have the tennis-court dug over, I suppose."

      "I thought we wouldn't, Reggie. We've dug up the paddock, and the top field, and those other two and the old rose garden. Surely we can keep the tennis-court."

      "My dear girl, who do you think is ever going to play tennis here again?"

      "The children," said Valentine Arbell.

      Her voice died away into silence, as though she foresaw the General's reply before he spoke it.

      "What children?" he demanded derisively.

      What children indeed.

      Primrose was three-and-twenty and even before the war had never, once her school-days were over, wished to spend her time at home.

      Jessica was seventeen and a half and was waiting to be called up for the W.A.A.F.

      She would be gone long before summer came again.

      Valentine Arbell had never had a son.

      "I suppose you're right," she acknowledged with the gentle Edwardian courtesy of tone and manner that betrayed her years far more surely than did her appearance. "It would hardly be worth while to keep up the poor old tennis-court for one's possible grandchildren."

      She smiled as she spoke and it would have taken someone more observant, and far more interested in human reactions, than was the General to notice the real gravity—a kind of permanent, incredulous sadness—of her face.

      "Grandchildren!"

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