d make a home for
Winny.

* * * * *

And as the months went on he kept himself fitter than ever. He did
dumb-bell practice in his bedroom. He sprinted like mad. He rowed hard
on the river. He was so fit that in June (just before stock-taking) he
entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports, and won the silver cup
against Fred Booty in the Hurdle Race. He was more than ever punctual at
the Poly. Gym.

And sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, he would take Winny for a bicycle
ride into the country. He liked pushing her machine up all the hills;
still more he liked to help her in her first fierce charging of them,
with a strong hand at the back of her waist. That was nothing to the joy
of scorching on the level with linked hands. And it was best of all when
they rested, sitting side by side under a birch tree on the Common, or
lying in the long grass of the fields.

Thus on a Sunday afternoon in June they found themselves alone in a
corner of a meadow in Southfields. All day Ransome had been overcome by
a certain melancholy which Winny for some reason affected to ignore.

They had been silent for a perceptible time, Ransome lying on his back
while Winny, seated beside him, gathered what daisies and buttercups
were within her reach. And as he watched her sidelong, it struck him all
at once that Winny's life was worse even than his own. Winny was clever,
and she had a berth as book-keeper in Starker's, one of the smaller
drapers' shops in Oxford Street, near Woolridge's. Her position was as
good as his, yet she only earned five pounds a month to his eight. And
he hated to think of Winny working, anyway.

"Winny," he said, suddenly, "do you like book-keeping?"

"Of course I do," said Winny. She didn't, but she was not going to say
so lest he should think that she was discontented.

"They--are they decent to you at Starker's?"

"Of course they are. I would like," said Winny, in her grandest manner,
"to see anybody trying it on with _me_."

"Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. But I
thought--perhaps--you didn't."

"You'd no business to think."

"Can't help it. Born thinkin'."

"Well--it shows how much you know. I mean to enjoy life," said Winny.
"And I do enjoy it."

Ranny, lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, said that
that was a jolly sight more than he did; that for his part he thought it
a pretty rotten show.

Winny stared, for this utterance was