‘Here’s a young gentleman asks a bit o’ dinner, and a young I-d’n-know-what ‘s after the same; I leaves it to you, missus.’

His wife took it off his shoulders in good humour, saying it was lucky she made the pie big enough for her family and strays.  They would not accept more than a shilling for our joint repast.  The man said that was the account to a farthing, if I was too proud to be a poor man’s guest, and insisted on treating him like a public.  Perhaps I would shake hands at parting?  I did cordially, and remembered him when people were not so civil.  They wanted to know whether we had made a runaway match of it.  The fun of passing a boys’-school and hearing the usher threaten to punish one fellow for straying from ranks, entertained me immensely.  I laughed at them just as the stupid people we met laughed at me, which was unpleasant for the time; but I knew there was not a single boy who would not have changed places with me, only give him the chance, though my companion was a gipsy girl, and she certainly did look odd company for a gentleman’s son in a tea-garden and public-house parlour.  At nightfall, however, I was glad of her and she of me, and we walked hand in hand.  I narrated tales of Roman history.  It was very well for her so say, ‘I’ll mother you,’ as we lay down to sleep; I discovered that she would never have hooted over churchyard graves in the night.  She confessed she believed the devil went about in the night.  Our bed was a cart under a shed, our bed-clothes fern-leaves and armfuls of straw.  The shafts of the cart were down, so we lay between upright and level, and awakening in the early light I found our four legs hanging over the seat in front.  ‘How you have been kicking!’ said I. She accused me of the same.  Next minute she pointed over the side of the cart, and I saw the tramp’s horse and his tents beneath a broad roadside oak-tree.  Her face was comical, just like a boy’s who thinks he has escaped and is caught.  ‘Let’s run,’ she said.  Preferring positive independence, I followed her, and then she told me that she had overheard the tramp last night swearing I was as good as a fistful of half-crowns lost to him if he missed me.  The image of Rippenger’s school overshadowed me at this communication.  With some melancholy I said:  ‘You’ll join your friends, won’t you?’

She snapped her fingers:  ‘Mumpers !’ and walked on carelessly.

We were now on the great heaths.  They brought the memory of my father vividly; the smell of the air half inclined me to turn my steps toward London, I grew so full of longing for him.  Nevertheless I resolved to have one gaze at Riversley, my aunt Dorothy, and Sewis, the old grey-brown butler, and the lamb that had grown a sheep; wonderful contrasts to my grand kings of England career.  My first clear recollection of Riversley was here, like an outline of a hill seen miles away.  I might have shed a tear or two out of love for my father, had not