rriage road winding
up the hill was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it,
and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none too sunny
soul of "Skim" Winsh, the carter.

But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and
Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.

"You lif' her like that, an' you tip her like that," he explained to the
gang. "My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut."

"Are they roads yonder?" said Skim, sitting under the laurels.

"No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call 'em. They'd suit
you, Skim."

"Why?" said the incautious Skim.

"Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a
Saturday," was the answer.

"I didn't last time neither," Skim roared.

After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly, "Well,
dirt or no dirt, there's no denyin' Chapin knows a good job when he
sees it. 'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the next, like that nigger
Sangres."

"SHE's the one that knows her own mind," said Pinky, brother to Skim
Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring the grand
piano across the fields in the autumn rains.

"She had ought to," said Iggulden. "Whoa, Buller! She's a Lashmar. They
never was double-thinking."

"Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?" said Skim,
doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.

The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the
fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. "She's a Lashmar right enough.
I started up to write to my uncle--at once--the month after she said her
folks came from Veering Holler."

"Where there ain't any roads?" Skim interrupted, but none laughed.

"My uncle he married an American woman for his second, and she took
it up like a like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar
place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot Hill Lashmar, nor
any o' the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of the ground here, neither
chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to America--I've got
it all writ down by my uncle's woman--in eighteen hundred an' nothing.
My uncle says they're all slow begetters like."

"Would they be gentry yonder now?" Skim asked.

"Nah--there's no gentry in America, no matter how long you're there.
It's against their law. There's only rich and poor allowed. They've
been lawyers and such like over yonder for a hundred years but she's a