He would have been commanding his battalion now, if only he were free.

His colonel wrote and told me so himself." "I wish there were something I could do," Griffiths murmured, a little awkwardly.

"It hurts me, Lady Cranston, to see you so upset." She looked at him for a moment in faint surprise.
"Nobody can do anything," she bemoaned.

"That is the unfortunate part of it all." He rose to his feet and was immediately conscious, as he always was when he stood up, that there was a foot or two of his figure which he had no idea what to do with.
"You wouldn't feel like a ride to-morrow morning, Lady Cranston ?" he asked, with a wistfulness which seemed somehow stifled in his rather unpleasant voice.

She shook her head.
"Perhaps one morning later," she replied, a little vaguely.