He came back with a D.S.O.and a Staff appointment for a short Christmas leave, everybody, except his father, turning out to welcome him as the local hero.

Then, for a time, he went to Aldershot as the head of an Officers' School there, and was able to come down occasionally to Chetworth or Mannering.
During that first Christmas leave he paid several visits to Chetworth, and evidently felt at home there.

To Lady Chicksands, whom most people regarded as a tiresome nonentity, he was particularly kind and courteous.

It seemed to give him positive pleasure to listen to her garrulous housekeeping talk, or to hold her wool for her while she wound it.

And as she, poor lady, was not accustomed to such attention from brilliant young men, his three days' visit was to her a red-letter time.