so knowing about?'"

"And had they?" asked Guy, encouragingly.

"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was
walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a
Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish
you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I
tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is
for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."

Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he
was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to
Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and
left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for
a moment to look at a trace, the air, brilliantly dusted with autumnal
gold, seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence; along the
sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the
September sky above, and Guy felt like them, worshipful of the cloudless
scene. The road ran along the upland for half a mile before it dipped
suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush, from which the spire of
Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke
ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town
clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the
church was Plashers Mead, and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of
his long, low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of
the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the
slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the
house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an
outcrop of stone.

"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold while the trap jolted
cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old
Burrows was glad to let it. You're young, though, and I dare say you
won't mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's
wife's nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're
young, and I dare say you'll enjoy it."

The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden
gateway in the gray wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the
highroad the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.

"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He
had tried all the way back no