and three striplings. Another big
man came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main
groups. He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car. The
fellow's eyes were queer, and threatening, and sad--giving Stanley a
feeling of discomfort. Then came a short, square man with an impudent,
loquacious face and a bit of swagger in his walk. He, too, looked up at
Stanley and made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with
him to grin sheepishly. A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow
face and drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent
fellow, with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck
Stanley as half-idiotic. Then two more striplings of seventeen or so,
whittling at bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in
cheeks; and, last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on
a round head covered with thin, light hair, moving at a 'dot-here,
dot-there' walk, as though he had beasts to drive.

Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the threatening, sad eyes,
the old, yellow-faced man with a limp, and the little man who came out
last, lost in his imaginary beasts--looked at the car furtively as they
went their ways. And Stanley thought: 'English peasant! Poor devil! Who
is he? What is he? Who'd miss him if he did die out? What's the use of
all this fuss about him? He's done for! Glad I've nothing to do with
him at Becket, anyway! "Back to the land!" "Independent peasantry!"
Not much! Shan't say that to Clara, though; knock the bottom out of her
week-ends!' And to his chauffeur he muttered:

"Get on, Batter!"

So, through the peace of that country, all laid down in grass, through
the dignity and loveliness of trees and meadows, this May evening, with
the birds singing under a sky surcharged with warmth and color, he sped
home to dinner.

CHAPTER XX

But next morning, turning on his back as it came dawn, Stanley thought,
with the curious intensity which in those small hours so soon becomes
fear: 'By Jove! I don't trust that woman a yard! I shall wire for
Felix!' And the longer he lay on his back, the more the conviction bored
a hole in him. There was a kind of fever in the air nowadays, that women
seemed to catch, as children caught the measles. What did it all mean?
England used to be a place to live in. One would have thought an
old country like this would have got through its infantile diseases!
Hysteria! No one gave