Tilda, for her part, looked at Arthur Miles and to him addressed her answer—­

“’Enery’s broke it off!”

“Oh!” said the boy.  He reflected a moment, and added with a bright smile, “And what about Sam?”

“It’s all ‘ere”—­she held out the letter; “an’ we got to take it to ’im.  ’Enery says that waitin’s a weary business, but ’e leaves it to ’er; on’y ‘e’s just found out there’s insanity on ’is side o’ the family.  That’s a bit ‘ard on Sam, o’ course; but ‘Enery doesn’ know about Sam’s feelin’s.  ‘E was just tryin’ to be tactful.”

“You’ll pardon my curiosity,” put in young Mr. Jessup; “but I don’t seem to get the hang of this.  So far as I figure it up, you two children jump out of nowhere and find yourselves here for the first time in your lives; and before I can paint one of you—­and I’m no snail—­the other walks into a public-house, freezes on to an absolute stranger, bustles her through one matrimonial affair and has pretty well fixed her with another.  As a student of locomotion”—­he turned and stared down upon Tilda—­“I’d like you to tell me how you did it.”

“Well,” she answered, “I felt a bit nervous at startin’.  So I walked straight in an’ ordered two-penn’orth o’ beer—­an’ then it all came out.”

“Was that so?” He perpended this, and went on, “I remember reading somewhere in Ruskin that the more a man can do his job the more he can’t say how.  It’s rough on learners.”

But Tilda was not to be drawn into a disputation on Art.

“Come along,” she called to the boy.

“You mean to take him from me in this hurry? . . .  Well, that breaks another record.  I never up to now lost a model before I’d weakened on him:  it’s not their way.”

“That young man,” said Tilda as, holding Arthur Miles by the hand, she drew him away and left the pair standing where the level sun slanted through the willows—­“that young man,” she repeated, turning for a last wave of the hand to the girl in the sunbonnet, “is ’e a bit touched in ’is ’ead, now?”

The dusk gathered as they retraced their way along Avon bank, and by the time they reached the fair meadow the shows were hanging out their lights.  The children gave the field a wide berth, and fetching a circuit, reached a grey stone bridge over which the road led into the town.

They crossed it.  They were now in Stratford, in a street lit with gas-lamps and lined with bright shop-windows; and Tilda had scarcely proceeded a dozen yards before she turned, aware of something wrong with the boy.  In truth, he had never before made acquaintance with a town at night.  Lamps and shop-fronts alike bewildered him.  He had halted, irresolute.  He needed her hand to pilot him.