It would be unkind to wake this dear bedfellow merely because he himself could not sleep.  He clasped his hands behind his head, and by a prolonged effort of will remained motionless.  But insomnia was exciting every nerve in his body; each memory seemed to light up the entire labyrinth of his brain; each sense-message came inward like a bomb-shell, reaching with its explosion the highest as well as the deepest centers, discharging circuits of swift fire through every area of associated ideas, and so completely shattering the normal congruity between impressions and recognitions that the slight drag of the sheet across his raised toes was sufficient to make him feel again the pressure of thick boots that he had worn years ago when he tramped as new postman on the Manninglea Road.

And each thing that he thought of he saw—­hawthorn blossom like snow on the hedgerows, red rhododendrons as vivid as Chinese lanterns in the gloom of the dark copse, the green moss of the rides, the white paint of the gates.  The farthest point of his round was Mr. Barradine’s mansion, and he used to arrive there just before eight o’clock.  With the thought came the luminous pictures, and he saw again, as clearly as fifteen years ago, the splendor of the Abbey House—­that is, all one can see of it as one approaches its vast servants’ offices.  Here, solidly real, were the archway, the first and the second courtyard, grouped gables and irregular roof ridges, the belfry tower and its gilded vane; men washing a carriage, a horse drinking at the fountain trough, a dog lying on a sunlit patch of cobble-stones and lazily snapping at flies; a glimpse, through iron scroll work, of terrace balustrades, yellow gravel, and lemon-trees in tubs; the oak doors of laundries, drying-rooms, and so forth.

It was here, outside the laundry, that he saw Mavis for the first time; and although the sleeves of her print dress were rolled up and she was carrying a metal skimming dish, something ineffably refined and superior in her deportment led him to believe that she was some lesser member of the august Barradine family, and not one of its hired dependents.  He touched his peaked cap, and did not even venture to say “Good morning, miss.”

Then he found out about her.  She was not quite so grand as all that.  You might say she was a young lady right enough, if you merely counted manners and education; but she had been born far below the level of gentility.  She belonged to the Petherick lot; and, living with her aunt at North Ride Cottage, she came every day to the Abbey to do some light and delicate work in Mr. Barradine’s model dairy.  The fact that she had lost both her parents interested and pleased Dale:  orphanhood seemed to contain the embryonic germs of a mutual sympathy.

He used to speak to her now whenever he saw her.  One day they stood talking in the copse, and he showed her their distorted reflections on the curves of her shining cream-dish.  She laughed; and that day he was late on his round.