't everything, mother. You should hear Elias Mason talk. You
should hear him repeat poetry."

"Well, then, have Elias."

"Ah, but I haven't the heart to turn against Adam."

"There, now! I never saw such a gal. You're like a calf betwixt two
hayricks; you have a nibble at the one and a nibble at the other.
There's not one in a hundred as lucky as you. Here's Adam with three
pound ten a week, foreman already at the Chalk Works, and likely enough
to be manager if he's spared. And there's Elias, head telegraph clerk at
the Post Office, and earning good money too. You can't keep 'em both on.
You've got to take one or t'other, and it's my belief you'll get neither
if you don't stop this shilly-shally."

"I don't care. I don't want them. What do they want to come bothering
for?"

"It's human natur', gal. They must do it. If they didn't, you'd be the
first to cry out maybe. It's in the Scriptures. 'Man is born for woman,
as the sparks fly upwards.'" She looked up out of the corner of her eyes
as if not very sure of her quotation. "Why, here be that dratted Bill.
The good book says as we are all made of clay, but Bill does show it
more than any lad I ever saw."

They had turned from the road into a narrow, deeply rutted lane, which
led towards the farm. A youth was running towards them, loose-jointed
and long-limbed, with a boyish, lumbering haste, clumping fearlessly
with his great yellow clogs through pool and mire. He wore brown
corduroys, a dingy shirt, and a red handkerchief tied loosely round his
neck. A tattered old straw hat was tilted back upon his shock of coarse,
matted, brown hair. His sleeves were turned up to the elbows, and his
arms and face were both tanned and roughened until his skin looked like
the bark of some young sapling. As he looked up at the sound of the
steps, his face with its blue eyes, brown skin, and first slight down
of a tawny moustache, was not an uncomely one, were it not marred by the
heavy, stolid, somewhat sulky expression of the country yokel.

"Please, mum," said he, touching the brim of his wreck of a hat,
"measter seed ye coming. He sent to say as 'ow 'e were in the five-acre
lot."

"Run back, Bill, and say that we are coming," answered the farmer's
wife, and the awkward figure sped away upon its return journey.

"I say, mother, what is Bill's other name?" asked the girl, with languid
curiosity.

"He's not got one."

"No name?"

"No, Dolly, he's a found child, and never