so much better than the
family of Banks?

"I suppose it would be very terrible for you all if she married this
chap?" I said.

"Unthinkable," Jervaise replied curtly.

"It would be worse in a way than your marrying the sister?"

"I should never be such an infernal fool as to do a thing like that," he
returned.

"Has she ... have there been any tender passages between you and Miss
Banks?" I asked.

"No," he snapped viciously.

"You've been too careful?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't think she likes me," he said.

"Oh!" was all my comment.

I needed no more explanations; and I liked Jervaise even less than I had
before. I began to wish that he had not seen fit to confide in me. I had,
thoughtlessly, been dramatising the incident in my mind, but, now, I was
aware of the unpleasant reality of it all. Particularly Jervaise's part in
it.

"Can't be absolutely certain, of course," he continued.

"But if she did like you?" I suggested.

"I've got to be very careful who I marry," he explained. "We aren't
particularly well off. All our property is in land, and you know what sort
of an investment that is, these days."

I tried another line. "And if you find your sister up at the Home Farm;
and Banks; what are you going to do?"

"Kick him and bring her home," he said decidedly.

"Nothing else for it, I suppose?" I replied.

"Obviously," he snarled.

We had come into a wood and it was very dark under the trees. I wondered
why I should restrain the impulse to strangle him and leave him there? He
was no good, and, to me, quite peculiarly objectionable. It seemed, in
what was then my rather fantastic state of mind, that it would be a
triumph of whimsicality. I should certainly have resisted the impulse in
any case, but my attention was diverted from it at that moment by a sudden
pattering of feet along the leaves of the great trees under which we were
walking--light, clean, sharp, little dancing feet, springing from leaf to
leaf--dozens of them chasing each other, rattling ecstatically up and down
the endless terraces of wide foliage.

"Damn it all, it's beginning to rain like blazes," remarked the foolish
Jervaise.

"How much farther is it?" I asked.

He said we were "just there."

* * * * *

I saw the Home Farm first as a little square haze of yellow light far up
in the sky. I didn't realise the sharp rise in the ground immediately in
front of us, and that rectangular be