“Oh yes, you can; you’re a very good walker.”

At last he began to tell her about himself, in the usual fashion of the male, who knows by instinct that subject is most interesting to both.  He dwelt on his sporting triumphs of the past, and explained his trials and tribulations in the present.  He represented that he was mewed up like an eagle.  He described how the tragic call to work for a living had sounded in his ear when he anticipated no such painful experience.  Before this narrative Sabina affected a deeper sympathy than she felt, yet honestly perceived that to such a man, his present life of regular hours must be dreary and desolate.

“It’s terrible dull for you, I’m sure,” she said.

“It was,” he confessed, “but I’m getting broken in, or perhaps it’s because you’re so jolly friendly.  You’re the only person I know in the whole world who has got the mind and imagination to see what a frightful jar it was for an open-air man like me to be dropped into this.  People think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that I should suddenly begin to work.  But it’s just as unnatural really as if my brother suddenly began to play.  Even my great friend, Arthur Waldron, talks rubbish about everybody having to work sooner or later—­not that he ever did.  But you were quick enough to see in a moment.  You’re tremendously clever, really.”

“I wish I was; but I saw, of course, that you were rather contemptuous of it all.”

“So I was at first,” he confessed.  “At first I felt that it was a woman’s show, and that what women can do well is no work for men.  But I soon saw I was wrong.  It increased my respect for women in a way.  To find, for instance, that you could do what you do single-handed and make light of it; that was rather an eye-opener.  Whenever any pal of mine talks twaddle about what women can’t do, I shall bring him to see you at work.”

“I could do something better than spin if I got the chance,” she said, and he applauded the sentiment highly.

“Of course you could, and I’m glad you’ve got the pluck to say so.  I knew that from the first.  You’re a lot too clever for spinning, really.  You’d shine anywhere.  Let’s sit here under this thorn bush.  I must get some rabbiting over this scrub.  The place swarms with them.  You don’t mind if I smoke?”

They rested, and he ventured to make a personal remark after Sabina had taken off her gloves to cool her hands.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” he said, noting what seemed to be an injury.  But she made light of it.

“It’s only a corn from stopping the spindles.  Every spinner’s hands are like that.  Alice Chick has chilblains in winter, then she gets a cruel, bad hand.”

The slight deformity made Raymond uncomfortable.  He could not bear to think of a woman suffering such a stigma in her tender flesh.

“They ought to invent something to prevent you being hurt,” he said, and Sabina laughed.