‘But we only sat on cushions on the floor,’ said her master.

‘They’re too old for romps,’ she retorted, ‘an’ it’s only the beginning of things.  I’ve seen what I’ve seen.  Besides, they talked and laughed in the passage going to their baths—­such as took ’em.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Rhoda,’ said Midmore.  No man—­unless he has loved her—­will casually dismiss a woman on whose lap he has laid his head.

‘Very good,’ she snorted, ‘but that cuts both ways.  An’ now, you go down to Sidney’s this evenin’ and put him where he ought to be.  He was in his right about you givin’ ‘im notice about changin’ the pig, but he ’adn’t any right to turn it up before your company.  No manners, no pig-pound.  He’ll understand.’

Midmore did his best to make him.  He found himself reviling the old man in speech and with a joy quite new in all his experience.  He wound up—­it was a plagiarism from a plumber—­by telling Mr. Sidney that he looked like a turkey-cock, had the morals of a parish bull, and need never hope for a new pig-pound as long as he or Midmore lived.

‘Very good,’ said the giant.  ’I reckon you thought you ’ad something against me, and now you’ve come down an’ told it me like man to man.  Quite right.  I don’t bear malice.  Now, you send along those bricks an’ sand, an’ I’ll make a do to build the pig-pound myself.  If you look at my lease you’ll find out you’re bound to provide me materials for the repairs.  Only—­only I thought there’d be no ‘arm in my askin’ you to do it throughout like.’

Midmore fairly gasped.  ’Then, why the devil did you turn my carts back when—­when I sent them up here to do it throughout for you?’

Mr. Sidney sat down on the floodgates, his eyebrows knitted in thought.

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said slowly. ‘’Twas too dam’ like cheatin’ a suckin’ baby.  My woman, she said so too.’

For a few seconds the teachings of the Immoderate Left, whose humour is all their own, wrestled with those of Mother Earth, who has her own humours.  Then Midmore laughed till he could scarcely stand.  In due time Mr. Sidney laughed too—­crowing and wheezing crescendo till it broke from him in roars.  They shook hands, and Midmore went home grateful that he had held his tongue among his companions.

When he reached his house he met three or four men and women on horse-back, very muddy indeed, coming down the drive.  Feeling hungry himself, he asked them if they were hungry.  They said they were, and he bade them enter.  Jimmy took their horses, who seemed to know him.  Rhoda took their battered hats, led the women upstairs for hairpins, and presently fed them all with tea-cakes, poached eggs, anchovy toast, and drinks from a coromandel-wood liqueur case which Midmore had never known that he possessed.

‘And I will say,’ said Miss Connie Sperrit, her spurred foot on the fender and a smoking muffin in her whip hand, ’Rhoda does one top-hole.  She always did since I was eight.’