hemes had held the money-markets of the world in
suspense, was now patiently mastering the technical business of forming
a "slath," and fathoming the mysteries of "scalluming." Like an obedient
child at school he implicitly followed the instructions of his teacher,
Mary, who with the first basket he completed went out and effected a
sale as she said "for fourpence," though really for twopence.

"And good pay, too!" she said, cheerfully--"It's not often one gets so
much for a first make."

"That fourpence is yours," said Helmsley, smiling at her--"You've the
right to all my earnings!"

She looked serious.

"Would you like me to keep it?" she asked--"I mean, would it please you
if I did,--would you feel more content?"

"I should--you know I should!" he replied earnestly.

"All right, then! I'll check it off your account!" And laughing merrily,
she patted his head as he sat bending over another specimen of his
basket manufacture--"At any rate, you're not getting bald over your
work, David! I never saw such beautiful white hair as yours!"

He glanced up at her.

"May I say, in answer to that, that I never saw such beautiful brown
hair as yours?"

She nodded.

"Oh, yes, you may say it, because I know it's true. My hair is my one
beauty,--see!"

And pulling out two small curved combs, she let the whole wealth of her
tresses unwind and fall. Her hair dropped below her knees in a glorious
mass of colour like that of a brown autumn leaf with the sun just
glistening on it. She caught it up in one hand and knotted it all again
at the back of her head in a minute.

"It's lovely, isn't it?"--she said, quite simply--"I should think it
lovely if I saw it on anybody else's head, or cut off hanging in a
hair-dresser's shop window. I don't admire it because it's mine, you
know! I admire it as hair merely."

"Hair merely--yes, I see!" And he bent and twisted the osiers in his
hands with a sudden vigour that almost snapped them. He was thinking of
certain women he had known in London--women whose tresses, dyed, waved,
crimped and rolled over fantastically shaped "frames," had moved him to
positive repulsion,--so much so that he would rather have touched the
skin of a dead rat than laid a finger on the tinted stuff called "hair"
by these feminine hypocrites of fashion. He had so long been accustomed
to shams that the open sincerity of the Weircombe villagers was almost
confusing to his mind. Nobody seemed to have anything t