a rake.
He went through the South African War, and stopped out there for five
years. I'm living with his father and mother. I've no home of my own
now. My people had a big farm--over a thousand acres--in Oxfordshire.
Not like here--no. Oh, they're very good to me, his father and mother.
Oh yes, they couldn't be better. They think more of me than of their own
daughters.--But it's not like being in a place of your own, is it? You
can't _really_ do as you like. No, there's only me and his father and
mother at home. Always a chauffeur? No, he's been all sorts of things:
was to be a farm-bailiff by rights. He's had a good education--but he
liked the motors better.--Then he was five years in the Cape Mounted
Police. I met him when he came back from there, and married him--more
fool me----"

At this point the peacocks came round the corner on a puff of wind.

"Hello, Joey!" she called, and one of the birds came forward, on
delicate legs. Its grey spreckled back was very elegant, it rolled its
full, dark-blue neck as it moved to her. She crouched down. "Joey dear,"
she said, in an odd, saturnine caressive voice: "you're bound to find
me, aren't you?" She put her face downward, and the bird rolled his
neck, almost touching her face with his beak, as if kissing her.

"He loves you," I said.

She twisted her face up at me with a laugh.

"Yes," she said, "he loves me, Joey does"--then, to the bird--"and I
love Joey, don't I? I _do_ love Joey." And she smoothed his feathers for
a moment. Then she rose, saying: "He's an affectionate bird."

I smiled at the roll of her "bir-rrd."

"Oh yes, he is," she protested. "He came with me from my home seven
years ago. Those others are his descendants--but they're not like
Joey--_are they, dee-urr?_" Her voice rose at the end with a witch-like
cry.

Then she forgot the birds in the cart-shed, and turned to business
again.

"Won't you read that letter?" she said. "Read it, so that I know what
it says."

"It's rather behind his back," I said.

"Oh, never mind him," she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough.
If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he
wouldn't have cause to grumble. You read me what it says."

Now I felt a distinct reluctance to do as she bid, and yet I began--"'My
dear Alfred.'"

"I guessed that much," she said. "Eliza's dear Alfred." She laughed.
"How do you say it in French? _Eliza?_"

I told her, and she repeated the name w