d chickens are not a bit the same here that they are in Europe--and of
course the farm servants are utterly unlike the same class in England.
One has to unlearn a good deal of what one thought one knew about stock-
keeping and agriculture, and take note of the native ways of doing
things; they are primitive and unenterprising of course, but they have an
accumulated store of experience behind them, and one has to tread warily
in initiating improvements."

The Frenchman looked round at the brown sun-scorched hills, with the
dusty empty road showing here and there in the middle distance and other
brown sun-scorched hills rounding off the scene; he looked at the lizards
on the verandah walls, at the jars for keeping the water cool, at the
numberless little insect-bored holes in the furniture, at the heat-drawn
lines on his hostess's comely face. Notwithstanding his present
wanderings he had a Frenchman's strong homing instinct, and he marvelled
to hear this lady, who should have been a lively and popular figure in
the social circle of some English county town, talking serenely of the
ways of humped cattle and native servants.

"And your children, how do they like the change?" he asked.

"It is healthy up here among the hills," said the mother, also looking
round at the landscape and thinking doubtless of a very different scene;
"they have an outdoor life and plenty of liberty. They have their ponies
to ride, and there is a lake up above us that is a fine place for them to
bathe and boat in; the three boys are there now, having their morning
swim. The eldest is sixteen and he is allowed to have a gun, and there
is some good wild fowl shooting to be had in the reed beds at the further
end of the lake. I think that part of the joy of his shooting
expeditions lies in the fact that many of the duck and plover that he
comes across belong to the same species that frequent our English moors
and rivers."

It was the first hint that she had given of a wistful sense of exile, the
yearning for other skies, the message that a dead bird's plumage could
bring across rolling seas and scorching plains.

"And the education of your boys, how do you manage for that?" asked the
visitor.

"There is a young tutor living out in these wilds," said Mrs. Kerrick;
"he was assistant master at a private school in Scotland, but it had to
be given up when--when things changed; so many of the boys left the
country. He came out to an uncle who ha