And Archibald, he remembered, had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.' Recently he had heard somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young Nicholas, had become a Volunteer.

'No,' thought Soames, mounting the stairs slowly, 'there's nothing in that!' He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a reassuring word.
Opening the landing window, he listened.

The rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the thought, 'If these motor-cars increase, it'll affect house property,' he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing call of a newsvendor.

There it was, and coming past the house! He knocked on his mother's door and went in.
His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.

He looked pink, and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned shoulders emerged in small peaks.