Betty, of course, had a "friend," the young
soldier whose sick leave was nearly up, and the child's deep velvety eyes
were looking nearly as tired as Miss Henderson's. While Jenny, too, the
timid, undeveloped Jenny had lately begun to take an interest in a
"friend," a young fellow belonging to Ellesborough's forestry camp whom
she had met in Millsborough the day of the Harvest Festival. They had
hardly exchanged half an hour's real conversation. But he had bought her
some sweets at Millsborough, and walked a bit of the way home with her.
Then she had seen him in the village once or twice. He had some relations
there--there was some talk of him, and that old murder at the farm--she
didn't know rightly what it was. But she felt somehow that Miss Henderson
wouldn't want to have him about--Miss Henderson didn't like talk of the
murder--so Jenny had never asked him to look her up. But her raw,
childish mind was full of him, and the ferments of sex were stirring.
In the secret opinion of both girls, "friends" were quite as much pain as
pleasure. No girl could do without them; but they were pretty certain to
cause heart-aches, to make a girl wish at some time or other that she had
never been born. A London factory-girl would have expressed it in the
Cockney way: "Blokes are no good--but you must have a bloke!"

The two girls then concluded that Captain Ellesborough had been causing
trouble, as all men did, at some point; and being sympathetic little
souls, they worked especially hard in the potato-field, and would not
allow Rachel to carry the heavier baskets to the "clamp."

Meanwhile Janet had been wrestling with old Halsey, till he had very
reluctantly yielded to her persuasion, and returned to work.

"I'm not the man I wor," he confided to Peter Betts, as they were eating
their dinner under a hedge in the damp October sunshine. "When I wor a
young man, I wouldn't ha' minded them things, not if it was iver so. But
now they do give me the shivers in my inside."

"What do?" said Peter Betts, with a mouthful of cold bacon. He was still
greatly in the dark as to why Halsey had left work so early in the
afternoon the day before, and why he was now in such a gruff and gloomy
mood. There was indeed a rumour in the village that old Halsey had seen
"summat," but as Halsey had gone to bed immediately after Miss Leighton
had had her say with him, and had refused to be "interviewed" even by
his wife, there was a good deal of uncertai