‘Have you not got any cuffs, Jack?’ she asks, ’your wrists look so bare without them.’

Jack makes no reply.  Another silence.  Presently he points with an expression meant to be sardonic at a distant farmhouse with his whip.

‘Jenny’s married,’ he says, full well aware that this announcement will wake her up, for there had been of old a sort of semi-feud or rivalry between the two girls, daughters of neighbouring farmers, and both with pretensions to good looks.

‘Who to?’ she asks eagerly.

‘To old Billy L——­; lots of tin.’

‘Pshaw!’ replies mademoiselle.  ’Why, he’s sixty, a nasty, dirty old wretch.’

‘He has plenty of money,’ suggests Jack.

‘What you think plenty of money, perhaps.  He is nothing but a farmer,’ as if a farmer was quite beneath her notice.

Just then a farmer rode out into the road from the gateway of a field, and Jack pulled up the pony.  The farmer was stout, elderly, and florid; he appeared fairly well-to-do by his dress, but was none too particular to use his razor regularly.  Yet there was a tenderness—­almost a pathos—­in the simple words he used:—­’Georgie, dear, come home?’ ‘Yes, papa,’ and she kissed his scrubby chin as he bent down from his horse.  He would not go to the station to meet her; but he had been waiting about behind the hedge for an hour to see her come along.  He rode beside the pony cart, but Georgie did not say anything more, or ask after any one else.

As they turned a corner the farmer pointed ahead.  ’There’s your mother, Georgie, looking over the garden wall.’  The yearning mother had been there these two hours, knowing that her darling could not arrive before a certain time, and yet unable in her impatience to stay within.  Those old eyes were dim with tears under the spectacles as Georgie quietly kissed her forehead, and then suddenly, with something like generous feeling, her lips.

They went in, an old pointer, whose days in the stubble were nearly over, following close at Georgie’s heels, but without obtaining a pat for his loving memory.  The table was spread for tea—­a snowy cloth, the whitest of bread, the most delicious golden butter, the ham fresh cooked, as Georgie might be hungry, the thick cream, the silver teapot, polished for Georgie, and the bright flowers in the vase before her plate.  The window was open, with its view of the old, old hills, and a breath of summer air came in from the meadow.  The girl glanced round, frowned, and went upstairs to her room without a word, passing on the landing the ancient clock in its tall case, ticking loud and slow.