It's quite right that they should poach," said Mary, watching him
tugging at the wire. "I wonder whether it was Alfred Duggins or Sid
Rankin? How can one expect them not to, when they only make fifteen
shillings a week? Fifteen shillings a week," she repeated, coming out on
the other side of the hedge, and running her fingers through her hair to
rid herself of a bramble which had attached itself to her. "I could live
on fifteen shillings a week--easily."

"Could you?" said Ralph. "I don't believe you could," he added.

"Oh yes. They have a cottage thrown in, and a garden where one can grow
vegetables. It wouldn't be half bad," said Mary, with a soberness which
impressed Ralph very much.

"But you'd get tired of it," he urged.

"I sometimes think it's the only thing one would never get tired of,"
she replied.

The idea of a cottage where one grew one's own vegetables and lived on
fifteen shillings a week, filled Ralph with an extraordinary sense of
rest and satisfaction.

"But wouldn't it be on the main road, or next door to a woman with
six squalling children, who'd always be hanging her washing out to dry
across your garden?"

"The cottage I'm thinking of stands by itself in a little orchard."

"And what about the Suffrage?" he asked, attempting sarcasm.

"Oh, there are other things in the world besides the Suffrage," she
replied, in an off-hand manner which was slightly mysterious.

Ralph fell silent. It annoyed him that she should have plans of which he
knew nothing; but he felt that he had no right to press her further. His
mind settled upon the idea of life in a country cottage. Conceivably,
for he could not examine into it now, here lay a tremendous possibility;
a solution of many problems. He struck his stick upon the earth, and
stared through the dusk at the shape of the country.

"D'you know the points of the compass?" he asked.

"Well, of course," said Mary. "What d'you take me for?--a Cockney like
you?" She then told him exactly where the north lay, and where the
south.

"It's my native land, this," she said. "I could smell my way about it
blindfold."

As if to prove this boast, she walked a little quicker, so that Ralph
found it difficult to keep pace with her. At the same time, he felt
drawn to her as he had never been before; partly, no doubt, because she
was more independent of him than in London, and seemed to be attached
firmly to a world where he had no place at all. Now the dusk had f