like a
spinster and was one. Almost you expected her to look at you over
spectacles and make an acrid comment on men or things.

"In front with his friend," replied Boy.

"Are you going to pace him?" asked Jim.

"I believe so," replied the girl casually. "Dad's going to send him the
full course to-day. Jerry and I are to take him over the fences the
first time round. And then Stanley's to bring him along the flat the
last two miles."

They travelled up the public path past the church amid the sycamores.
Mat on his fast-walking cob rode in front, kicking his legs. Boy and Jim
followed more soberly.

She rode a little behind him that she might see his profile. Suddenly he
reined back and met her face, his own gleaming with laughter. At such
moments he looked absurdly young.

"I say, Boy!" he began, dropping his voice.

She snatched her eyes from his face, and then peeped at him warily.

"What?"

He drew up beside her.

"I'm not a gentleman any more."

She looked straight before her. Her fine lips were firm and resisting,
but about her eyes the light stole and rippled deliciously.

"I'm not sure," she said, half to herself.

He pressed up alongside her, lifting his face.

"I'm not!" he cried. "I'm not!" eager as a boy in his protestations.
"You can't chuck that up at me any more."

Boy refused to face him or to be convinced.

"I don't," she said. "I don't believe in class. It's the man that
matters."

"Hear, hear," he cried. "It's the man--not the money. I see it now. I
haven't got tuppence to my name."

She turned her eyes down on him, brushing aside his coquetry with the
sweep of her steady gaze.

"D'you mind?" she asked in her direct and simple way as they emerged on
to the open Downs.

He sobered to her mood.

"Only in this way," he answered, "that it was my father's show, and I
don't like to have let it down."

The girl deliberated.

"I don't see that you could have helped it," she said after a pause.

"No, _I_ couldn't," he admitted. "_He_ could have. It was a One Man
show. And when the One Man went it was bound to go in time. However,
I've let nobody down but myself. And I don't care so much about the
stuff."

"No," she said. "You don't want all that. Nobody does; and it's not good
for you."

Preacher Joe had bobbed up suddenly in his fair grand-daughter, as he
did not seldom. She was deliciously unaware of the old man's presence at
her side; but Jim Silver welcomed him as a fami