ed toes was sufficient to make him feel again the
pressure of thick boots that he had worn years ago when he tramped as
new postman on the Manninglea Road.

And each thing that he thought of he saw--hawthorn blossom like snow
on the hedgerows, red rhododendrons as vivid as Chinese lanterns in
the gloom of the dark copse, the green moss of the rides, the white
paint of the gates. The farthest point of his round was Mr.
Barradine's mansion, and he used to arrive there just before eight
o'clock. With the thought came the luminous pictures, and he saw
again, as clearly as fifteen years ago, the splendor of the Abbey
House--that is, all one can see of it as one approaches its vast
servants' offices. Here, solidly real, were the archway, the first and
the second courtyard, grouped gables and irregular roof ridges, the
belfry tower and its gilded vane; men washing a carriage, a horse
drinking at the fountain trough, a dog lying on a sunlit patch of
cobble-stones and lazily snapping at flies; a glimpse, through iron
scroll work, of terrace balustrades, yellow gravel, and lemon-trees in
tubs; the oak doors of laundries, drying-rooms, and so forth.

It was here, outside the laundry, that he saw Mavis for the first
time; and although the sleeves of her print dress were rolled up and
she was carrying a metal skimming dish, something ineffably refined
and superior in her deportment led him to believe that she was some
lesser member of the august Barradine family, and not one of its hired
dependents. He touched his peaked cap, and did not even venture to say
"Good morning, miss."

Then he found out about her. She was not quite so grand as all that.
You might say she was a young lady right enough, if you merely counted
manners and education; but she had been born far below the level of
gentility. She belonged to the Petherick lot; and, living with her
aunt at North Ride Cottage, she came every day to the Abbey to do some
light and delicate work in Mr. Barradine's model dairy. The fact that
she had lost both her parents interested and pleased Dale: orphanhood
seemed to contain the embryonic germs of a mutual sympathy.

He used to speak to her now whenever he saw her. One day they stood
talking in the copse, and he showed her their distorted reflections on
the curves of her shining cream-dish. She laughed; and that day he was
late on his round.

Then somehow he got to a heavy sort of chaff about the letters. She
said she liked rec