What Timmy Did

ned hotels, which, perhaps because they are within a stone's throw of Piccadilly, still have faithful patrons all the year round, and are full to bursting during the

older than his age, which was thirty-two. Yet, for all that, there was an air of power and of reserved strength about him that s

with varying emotions in which he was, in a sense, luxuriating, though whethe

h two short breaks, a nine years' absence from Englan

f twenty-three, believing that he would never come back or,

he had at last obtained a commission. Within a fortnight of having reached his Mecca-the Front, he was back in England in the-to him-amazing guise of wounded hero. But he had sent for none of his old friends for he was still ashamed. After the Armistice he had rushed through England on his way to Australia, putting in a few days with a C

ofton was very pretty-an agreeable playfellow for a rich and lonely man. So it was that when it

ced himself upon them. And the thought of going ho

ofton, with whom he had spent a good deal of his time since his arrival in London three weeks ago, h

was he himself who, soon after they had become first acquainted in Egypt, had drawn such an attractive picture of the Surrey village. That, in fact, was why, in July-it was now late September-when she, Enid Crofton, had had to think of making a new home, Beechfield had seemed to her the ideal place. If only she could hear of a house to let t

after her last letter to him, for she and R

ars, Godfrey Radmore was not altogether sorry to feel a touc

had drifted in the January of 1914, and with whom he had, after a fashion, made friends, had re-made his will in the memorable autumn of that year, and had left Radmore half his vast fortune. Doubtless many such wills were made under the stress of war emotion, but-and it was here that Radmore's strange luck had come in-the maker of

e tempted to be always going to town. It seemed to him amazing that he now had it within his power to achieve what had always been his ideal. But when he had acquired exactly the kind of place he wanted to find, what those

eteen, and when he had fallen on evil days she had thrown him over in obedience to her father's strongly expressed w

ult struggle would have been well-nigh intolerable, and it was a million to one chance that he would ever have met the man to whom he owed his present good fortune. What he now longed to do was to enjoy himself in a simple, straightforwa

t she had been the young, very pretty wife of Colonel Crofton, an elderly "dug-out," odd and saturnine, whose manner to his wife was n

ned into serious regard. He had been surprised, rather distressed, to find how much less well-off they had appeared here, at home, than when the Colonel had been on so-called active service. It had also become plain to him-though he was not a man to loo

count of the inquest. Colonel Crofton had committed suicide, a result, it was stated, of depression owing to shell-shock. "Shell-shock" gave Radmore pause. He felt quite sure that Colonel Crofton ha

wing how and why-they had become intimate, meeting almost daily, lunching or dining together incessantly, Radmore naturall

almost ridiculous extent, Radmore would have been much taken aback had an angel from heaven told him that the real