this schoolmaster function only attracted him when there was
opposition. He had been quite sincere in denouncing humility in
women. It never failed to warn him off.

'Do you think she really wants to interfere?' he asked, smiling. 'I
expect it's only that she's got a bit of an organizing gift--like
the women who have been doing such fine things in the war.'

'There's no chance for me to do fine things in the war,' said Pamela
bitterly.

'Take up the land, and see! Suppose you and Miss Bremerton could
pull the estate together!'

Pamela's eyes scoffed.

'Father would never let me. No, I think sometimes I shall run away!'

He lifted his eyebrows, and she was annoyed with him for taking her
remark as mere bluff.

'You'll see,' she insisted. 'I shall do something desperate.'

'I wouldn't,' he said, quietly. 'Make friends with Miss Bremerton
and help her.'

'I don't like her enough,' she said, drawing quick breath.

He saw now she was in a mood to quarrel with him outright. But he
didn't mean to let her. With those eyes--in such a fire--she was
really splendid. How she had come on!

'I'm sorry,' he said mildly. 'Because, you know--if you don't mind
my saying so--it'll really take the two of you to keep your father
out of gaol. The Government's absolutely determined about this
thing--they can't afford to be anything else. _We're_ being
hammered, and gassed, and blown to pieces over there'--he pointed
eastward. 'It's the least the people over here can do--to play
up--isn't it?' Then he laughed. 'But I mustn't be setting you
against your father. I didn't mean to.'

Pamela shrugged her shoulders, in silence. She really longed to ask
him about his wound, his staff work, a thousand things; but they
didn't seem, somehow, to be intimate enough, to be hitting it off
enough. This meeting, which had been to her a point of romance
in the distance, was turning out to be just nothing--only
disappointment. She was glad to see how quickly the other pair were
coming towards them, and at the same time bitterly vexed that her
_tete-a-tete_ with Arthur was at an end.

CHAPTER VI

Meanwhile Elizabeth Bremerton was sitting pensive on a hill-side
about mid-way between Mannering and Chetworth. She had a bunch of
autumn berries in her hands. Her tweed skirt and country boots
showed traces of mud much deeper than anything on the high road; her
dress was covered with bits of bramble, dead leaves, and
thistledown; and her br