“And you wouldn’t try reasoning?”

“They are not amenable to reason.”

Stanley took up his hat.

“Well, I think some of us are.  I see your point; but, you know, violence never did any good; it isn’t—­isn’t English.”

She did not answer.  And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely:  “I should have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters.  Remember me to them.  Clara sent her regards”; and, looking round the room in a rather lost way, he held out his hand.

He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with even a little pressure.

Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, “Go home the other way, Batter, past the church.”

The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak beams, bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind’s eye with curious fidelity.  And those three kids, popping out like that—­proof that the whole thing was not a rather bad dream!  ‘Queer business!’ he thought; ’bad business!  That woman’s uncommonly all there, though.  Lot in what she said, too.  Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like her!’ And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men coming along the hedge toward the road—­evidently laborers.  What were they doing?  He stopped the car.  There were fifteen or twenty of them, and back in the field he could see a girl’s red blouse, where a little group of four still lingered.  ‘By George!’ he thought, ’those must be the young Tods going it!’ And, curious to see what it might mean, Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound to come.  First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness, had a jovial look.  Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man in shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke.  Then came two old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings.  Another big man came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main groups.  He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car.  The fellow’s eyes were queer, and threatening, and sad—­giving Stanley a feeling of discomfort.  Then came a short, square man with an impudent, loquacious face and a bit of swagger in his walk.  He, too, looked up at Stanley and made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin sheepishly.  A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow, with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley as half-idiotic.  Then two more striplings of seventeen or so, whittling at bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in cheeks; and, last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on a round head covered with thin, light hair, moving at a ‘dot-here, dot-there’ walk, as though he had beasts to drive.