od."

"You don't want to go?" I said.

"Well, no, honestly I don't," he replied. "The fact is I want to see Mr.
Jervaise again." He smiled as he added, "My little affair isn't settled
yet by a good bit, you see."

I sheered away from that topic; chiefly, I think, because I wanted to
avoid any suggestion of pumping him. When you have recently been branded
as a spy, you go about for the next few days trying not to feel like one.

"Isn't there any place in the village I could go to?" I asked.

He shook his head. "There's one pub--a sort of beerhouse--but they don't
take people in," he said.

"No lodgings?" I persisted.

"The Jervaises don't encourage that sort of thing," he replied. "Afraid of
the place getting frippery. I've heard them talking about it in the car.
And as they own every blessed cottage in the place...." He left the
deduction to my imagination, and continued with the least touch of
bashfulness, "You wouldn't care to come to us, I suppose?"

"To the Home Farm?" I replied stupidly. I was absurdly embarrassed. If I
had not chanced to see that grouping in the wood before lunch, I should
have jumped at the offer. But I knew that it must have been Miss Banks who
had seen me--spying. Jervaise had had his back to me. And she would
probably, I thought, take his view of the confounded accident. She would
be as anxious to avoid me as I was to avoid her. Coming so unexpectedly,
this invitation to the Farm appeared to me as a perfectly impossible
suggestion.

Banks, naturally, misinterpreted my embarrassment.

"I suppose it would put you in the wrong, as it were--up at the Hall," he
said. "Coming to us after that row, I mean, 'd look as if what they'd been
saying was all true."

"I don't care a hang about _that_," I said earnestly. In my relief at
being able to speak candidly I forgot that I was committing myself to an
explanation; and Banks inevitably wandered into still more shameful
misconceptions of my implied refusal.

"Only a farm, of course..." he began.

"Oh! my dear chap," I interposed quickly. "Do believe me, I'd far sooner
stay at the Home Farm than at Jervaise Hall."

He looked at me with rather a blank stare of inquiry.

"Well, then?" was all he found to say.

I could think of nothing whatever.

For a second or two we stared at one another like antagonists searching
for an unexposed weakness. He was the first to try another opening.

"Fact is, I suppose," he said tentatively, "that you