he hazy heat of the June morning.

"Well, what abaht it, sir?" said Joe, after they had proceeded for some
three hours. "Here we are."

Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through
which he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:

"I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might
stop."

"Any sort of farmer?" asked Joe.

"Is there more than one sort?" returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.

Joe cocked his eye. "Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?"

"Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts.
Of course, I know Eastbourne very well."

"I know Eastbourne from the inside," said Joe discursively. "I was a
waiter there once."

"An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think."

"Ah! Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say. But abaht
farmers--you've got a lot to learn, sir."

"I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life
are innumerable."

"I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers. I once travelled in
breeches."

"You seem to have done a great many things Joe."

"That's right, sir. I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a
scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest
job. But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears
Bedfords--don't you go near 'im, 'e bites. There's the modern
scientific farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im. And there's the
small-'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any
use to you.

"What am I to do then?" asked Mr Lavender.

"Ah!" said Joe, "'ave lunch."

Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty. "I
should like to have found a farmer first," he said.

"Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a
look round for one while I get lunch ready.

"That will do admirably."

"There's just one thing, sir," said Joe, when his master was about to
start; "don't you take any house you come across for a farm. They're
mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics."

"I shall be very careful," said Mr. Lavender.

"This glorious land!" he thought, walking away from the beech clump,
with Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its
former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy
man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of
his own prosperity. How flowery those beans look alread