“Mark,” she called to her son.  “What do you think has happened?  Your Uncle Henry has offered us a home.  I want you to write to him like a dear boy and thank him for his kindness.”  She explained in detail what Uncle Henry intended to do for them; but Mark would not be enthusiastic.  He on his side had been praying to God to put it into the mind of Samuel Dale to offer him a job on his farm; Slowbridge was a poor substitute for that.

“Where is Slowbridge?” he asked in a gloomy voice.

“It’s a fairly large place near London,” his mother told him.  “It’s near Eton and Windsor and Stoke Poges where Gray wrote his Elegy, which we learned last summer.  You remember, don’t you?” she asked anxiously, for she wanted Mark to cut a figure with his uncle.

“Wolfe liked it,” said Mark.  “And I like it too,” he added ungraciously.  He wished that he could have said he hated it; but Mark always found it difficult to tell a lie about his personal feelings, or about any facts that involved him in a false position.

“And now before you go down to tea with Cass Dale, you will write to your uncle, won’t you, and show me the letter?”

Mark groaned.

“It’s so difficult to thank people.  It makes me feel silly.”

“Well, darling, mother wants you to.  So sit down like a dear boy and get it done.”

“I think my nib is crossed.”

“Is it?  You’ll find another in my desk.”

“But, mother, yours are so thick.”

“Please, Mark, don’t make any more excuses.  Don’t you want to do everything you can to help me just now?”

“Yes, of course,” said Mark penitently, and sitting down in the window he stared out at the yellow November sky, and at the magpies flying busily from one side of the valley to the other.

     The Vicarage,

     Nancepean,

     South Cornwall.

     My dear Uncle Henry,

Thank you very much for your kind invitation to come and live with you.  We should enjoy it very much.  I am going to tea with a friend of mine called Cass Dale who lives in Nancepean, and so I must stop now.  With love,

     I remain,

     Your loving nephew,

     Mark.

And then the pen must needs go and drop a blot like a balloon right over his name, so that the whole letter had to be copied out again before his mother would say that she was satisfied, by which time the yellow sky was dun and the magpies were gone to rest.

Mark left the Dales about half past six, and was accompanied by Cass to the brow of Pendhu.  At this point Cass declined to go any farther in spite of Mark’s reminder that this would be one of the last walks they would take together, if it were not absolutely the very last.

“No,” said Cass.  “I wouldn’t come up from Church Cove myself not for anything.”

“But I’m going down by myself,” Mark argued.  “If I hadn’t thought you’d come all the way with me, I’d have gone home by the fields.  What are you afraid of?”