The mistress’s van, though it would not compare with the glorious vehicles that showmen put upon the road in these days, was a roomy and dignified specimen, and about as good as money could then buy.  The front portion consisted of a parlour and kitchen combined, and at the back was a dormitory.  In the dormitory Kezia, Sapphira and the youngest of their brothers were sleeping hard.  In the parlour and kitchen sat Mrs Clowes, warmly enveloped, holding the reins with her right hand and a shabby, paper-covered book in her left hand.  The book was the celebrated play, The Gamester, and Mrs Clowes was studying therein the role of Dulcibel.  Not a role for which Mrs Clowes was physically fitted; but her prolific daughter, Hephzibah, to whom it appertained by prescription, could not possibly play it any longer, and would, indeed, be incapacitated from any role whatever for at least a month.  And the season was not yet over; for folk were hardier in those days.

The reins stretched out from the careless hand of Mrs Clowes and vanished through a slit between the double doors, which had been fixed slightly open.  Mrs Clowes’s gaze, penetrating now and then the slit, could see the gleam of her lamp’s ray on a horse’s flank.  The only sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of Mrs Clowes’s voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part of Dulcibel.

And then there was another sound, which Mrs Clowes did not notice until it had been repeated several times; the cry of a human voice out on the road: 

“Missis!”

She opened wide the doors of the van and looked prudently forth.  Naturally, inevitably, Jock-at-a-Venture was trudging alongside, level with the horse’s tail!  He stepped nimbly—­he was a fine walker—­but none the less his breath came short and quick, for he had been making haste up a steepish hill in order to overtake the van.  And he carried a bundle and a stick in his hands, and on his head a superb but heavy beaver hat.

“I’m going your way, missis,” said Jock.

“Seemingly,” agreed Mrs Clowes, with due caution.

“Canst gi’ us a lift?” he asked.

“And welcome,” she said, her face changing like a flash to suit the words.

“Nay, ye needna’ stop!” shouted Jock.

In an instant he had leapt easily up into the van, and was seated by her side therein on the children’s stool.

“That’s a hat—­to travel in!” observed Mrs Clowes.

Jock removed the hat, examined it lovingly and replaced it.

“I couldn’t ha’ left it behind,” said he, with a sigh, and continued rapidly in another voice:  “Missis, we’n seen a pretty good lot o’ each other this wik, and yet ye slips off o’this’n, without saying good-bye, nor a word about yer soul!”

Mrs Clowes heaved her enormous breast and shook the reins.