, and I'm always scolding him. He can't straighten his
right arm, and has very little power in it. He was badly thrown
last winter, but directly he got up he was out again on Kitty."

"Living up to his reputation." Lawrence flicked the ash from his
cigar. "I should have known him anywhere by his eyes."

"He has kept very young, hasn't he? An uneventful life without
much anxiety does keep people young," philosophized Laura. "I
feel like a mother to him. But you'll see more of him this
afternoon."

"So I shall," said Lawrence, "if he isn't detained at
Countisford."

CHAPTER V

The reason why Lawrence found Isabel scrubbing Mrs. Drury's
floor was that Dorrie's pretty, sluttish little mother had been
whisked off to the Cottage Hospital with appendicitis an hour
earlier. She was in great distress about Dorrie when Isabel,
coming in with the parish magazine, offered to stay while Drury
went to fetch an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke. When Drury drove
up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving
many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted
off across the moor. Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that
it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel? She put her
feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on
the road, in a happy reliance on her one serviceable brake.

Her father was locked in his study writing a sermon: Isabel
however tumbled in by the window. She sidled up to Mr. Stafford,
sat on his knee, and wound one arm round his neck. "Jim
darling," she murmured in his ear, "have you any money?"

"Isabel," said Mr. Stafford, "how often have I told you that I
will not be interrupted in the middle of my morning's work? You
come in like a whirlwind, with holes in your stockings--"

Isabel giggled suddenly. "Never mind, darling, I'll help you
with your sermon. Whereabouts are you? Oh!--'I need not tell
you, my friends, the story we all know so well'--Jim, that's
what my tutor calls 'Redundancy and repetition.' You know quite
well you're going to tell us every word of it. Darling take its
little pen and cross it out--so--with its own nasty little
cross-nibbed J--"

"What do you mean by saying you want money," Mr. Stafford
hurriedly changed the subject, "and how much do you want? The
butcher's bill came to half a sovereign this week, and I must
keep five shillings to take to old Hewitt--"

"I want pounds and pounds."

"My de