A mild and puzzled laughter crossed the speaker’s face.

Halsey nodded.

“An’ now they’ve got the vote.  That’s the top on’t!  My old missis, she talks poltiks now to me of a night.  I don’t mind her, now the childer be all gone.  But I’d ha’ bid her mind her own business when they was yoong an’ wanted seein’ to.”

“Now, what can a woman knoa about poltiks?” said Batts, still in the same tone of pleasant rumination.  “It isn’t in natur. We warn’t given the producin’ o’ the babies—­we’d ha’ cried out if we ’ad been!”

A chuckle passed from one old man to the other.

“Well, onyways the women is all in a flutter about the votin’,” said Halsey, lighting his pipe with old hands that shook.  “An’ there’s chaps already coomin’ round lookin’ out for it.”

“You bet there is!” was Batts’s amused reply.  “But they’ll take their toime, will the women.  ’Don’t you try to hustle-bustle me like you’re doin’,’ say my missus sharp-like to a Labour chap as coom round lasst week, ‘cos yo’ won’t get nothin’ by it.’  And she worn’t no more forthcomin’ to the Conservative man when ee called.”

“Will she do what you tell her, Batts?” asked Halsey, with an evident interest in the question.

“Oh, Lord, no!” said Batts placidly, “shan’t try.  But now about this yoong woman an’ Great End?—­”

“Well, I ain’t heared much about her—­not yet awhile.  But they say as she’s nice-lookin’, an’ Muster Shentsone ee said as she’d been to college somewhere, where they’d larn’t her farmin’.”

Batts made a sound of contempt.

“College!” he said, with a twitching of the broad nostrils which seemed to spread over half his face. “They can’t larn yer farmin’!”

“She’s been on a farm too somewhere near Brighton, Muster Shenstone says, since she was at college; and ee told me she do seem to be terr’ble full o’ new notions.”

“She’d better be full o’ money,” said the other, cuttingly.  “Notions is no good without money to ’em.”

“Aye, they’re wunnerfull costly things is notions.  Yo’d better by a long way go by the folk as know.  But they do say she’ll be payin’ good wages.”

“I dessay she will!  She’ll be obleeged.  It’s Hobson’s choice, as you might say!” said Batts, chuckling again.

Halsey was silent, and the two old men trudged on with cheerful countenances.  Through the minds of both there ran pleasant thoughts of the contrast between the days before the war and the days now prevailing.  Both of them could remember a wage of fifteen and sixteen shillings a week.  Then just before the war, it had risen to eighteen shillings and a pound.  And now—­why the Wages Board for Brookshire had fixed thirty-three shillings as a weekly minimum, and a nine-hours’ day!  Prices were high, but they would go down some day; and wages would not go down.  The old men could not have told exactly why this confidence lay so deep in them; but there