I led the way up the cliffs with that wretched bag.  I insisted upon that condition anyhow—­that the man with the bag should lead the way.  I wasn’t going to have John dashing off at six miles an hour, and leaving himself only two miles at the end.

“But you can come and talk to me,” I said to him after ten minutes of it.  “I only meant that I was going to set the pace.”

“No, no, I like watching you.  You do it so gracefully.  This is my man,” he explained to some children who were blackberrying.  “He is just carrying my bag over the cliffs for me.  No, he is not very strong.”

“You wait,” I growled.

John laughed.  “Fifty minutes more,” he said.  And then after a little silence, “I think the bag-carrying profession is overrated.  What made you take it up, my lad?  The drink?  Ah, just so.  Dear, dear, what a lesson to all of us.”

“There’s a good time coming,” I murmured to myself, and changed hands for the eighth time.

“I don’t care what people say,” said John, argumentatively; “brown and blue do go together.  If you wouldn’t mind—­”

For the tenth time I rammed the sharp corner of the bag into the back of my knee.

“There, that’s what I mean.  You see it perfectly like that—­the brown against the blue of the flannel.  Thank you very much.”

I stumbled up a steep little bit of slippery grass, and told myself that in three-quarters of an hour I would get some of my own back again.  He little knew how heavy that bag could become.

“They say,” said John to the heavens, “that if you have weights in your hands you can jump these little eminences much more easily.  I suppose one hand alone doesn’t do.  What a pity he didn’t tell me before—­I would have lent him another bag with pleasure.”

“Nobody likes blackberries more than I do,” said John.  “But even I would hesitate to come out here on a hot afternoon and fill a great brown bag with blackberries, and then carry them eight miles home.  Besides, it looks rather greedy....  I beg your pardon, my lad, I didn’t understand.  You are taking them home to your aged mother?  Of course, of course.  Very commendable.  If I had a penny, I would lend it to you.  No, I only have a sixpence on me, and I have to give that to the little fellow who is carrying my bag over the cliffs for me....  Yes, I picked him up about a couple of miles back.  He has mud all up his trousers, I know.”

“Half an hour more,” I told myself, and went on doggedly, my right shoulder on fire.

“Dear, dear,” he said solicitously, “how lopsided the youth of to-day is getting.  Too much lawn-tennis, I suppose.  How much better the simply healthy exercises of our forefathers; the weightlifting after lunch, the—­”

He was silent for ten minutes, and then broke out rapturously once more.

“What a heavenly day!  I am glad we didn’t bring a bag—­it would have spoilt it altogether.  We can easily borrow some slippers, and it will be jolly walking back by moonlight.  Now, if you had had your way—­”