ope, his crook between his knees. They told him
what Old Jim had done.

'Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter
you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like,'said Mr
Dudeney.

'We be,' said Una, flopping down. 'And tired.'

'Set beside o' me here. The shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little
while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay
your eyes like so much wool.'

'We don't want to sleep,' said Una indignantly; but she settled herself
as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade.

'O' course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. He
didn't need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit.'

'Well, he belonged here,' said Dan, and laid himself down at length on
the turf.

'He did. And what beats me is why he went off to live among them messy
trees in the Weald, when he might ha' stayed here and looked all about
him. There's no profit to trees. They draw the lightning, and sheep
shelter under 'em, and so, like as not, you'll lose a half-score ewes
struck dead in one storm. Tck! Your father knew that.'

'Trees aren't messy.' Una rose on her elbow. 'And what about firewood? I
don't like coal.'

'Eh? You lie a piece more uphill and you'll lie more natural,' said Mr
Dudeney, with his provoking deaf smile. 'Now press your face down and
smell to the turf. That's Southdown thyme which makes our Southdown
mutton beyond compare, and, my mother told me, 'twill cure anything
except broken necks, or hearts. I forget which.'

They sniffed, and somehow forgot to lift their cheeks from the soft
thymy cushions.

'You don't get nothing like that in the Weald. Watercress, maybe?' said
Mr Dudeney.

'But we've water--brooks full of it--where you paddle in hot weather,'
Una replied, watching a yellow-and-violet-banded snail-shell close to
her eye.

'Brooks flood. Then you must shift your sheep--let alone foot-rot
afterward. I put more dependence on a dew-pond any day.'

'How's a dew-pond made?' said Dan, and tilted his hat over his eyes. Mr
Dudeney explained.

The air trembled a little as though it could not make up its mind
whether to slide into the Pit or move across the open. But it seemed
easiest to go downhill, and the children felt one soft puff after
another slip and sidle down the slope in fragrant breaths that baffed on
their eyelids. The little whisper of the sea by the cliffs joined with
the whisper of the wind over