“You’re different, Sabina.  You’ve not been brought up in a sporting family.  All the same you’d ride jolly well, because you’ve got nerve enough for anything and a perfect figure for riding.  You’d look fairly lovely on horseback.”

“Whatever will you say next?”

“I often wonder myself,” he answered.  “This much I’ll say any way:  it’s meat and drink to me to be walking here with you.  I only wish I was clever and could really amuse you and make you want to see me, sometimes.  But the things I understand, of course, bore you to tears.”

“You know very well that isn’t so,” she said.  “You’ve told me heaps of things well worth knowing—­things I should never have heard of but for you.  And—­and I’m sure I’m very proud of your friendship.”

“Good Lord!  It’s the other way about.  Thanks to Mister Churchouse and your own wits, you are fearfully well read, and your cleverness fairly staggers me.  Just to hear you talk is all I want—­at least that isn’t all.  Of course, it is a great score for an everyday sort of chap like me to have interested you.”

Sabina did not answer and after a silence which drew out into awkwardness, she made some remark on the flowers.  But Raymond was not interested about the flowers.  He had looked forward to this occasion as an opportunity of exceptional value and now strove to improve the shining hour.

“You know I’m a most unlucky beggar really, Sabina.  You mightn’t think it, but I am.  You see me cheerful, and joking and trying to make things pleasant for us all at the works; but sometimes, if you could see me tramping alone over North Hill, or walking on the beach and looking at the seagulls, you’d be sorry for me.”

“Of course, I’d be sorry for you—­if there was anything to be sorry for.”

“Look at it.  An open-air man brought up to think my father would leave me all right, and then cut off with nothing and forced to come here and stew and toil and wear myself out struggling with a most difficult business—­difficult to me, any way.”

“I’m sure you’re mastering it as quickly as possible.”

“But the effort.  And my muscles are shrinking and I’m losing weight.  But, of course, that’s nothing to anybody but myself.  And then, another side:  I want to think of you people first and raise your salaries and so on—­especially yours, for you ought to have pounds where you have shillings.  And my wishes to do proper things, in the line of modern progress and all that, are turned down by my brother.  Here am I thinking about you and worrying and knowing it’s all wrong—­and there’s nobody on my side—­not a damned person.  And it makes me fairly mad.”

“I’m sure it’s splendid of you to look at the Mill in such a high-minded way,” declared Sabina.  “And now you’ve told me, I shall understand what’s in your mind.  I’m sure I thank you for the thought at any rate.”

“If you’d only be my friend,” he said.