'Good marnin'' to the gentry when they comes round, and tell his age,
and how long he've a-been here, and all. I d' 'low he'll do it just so
well as you."

Giles gazed at the speaker frowningly; he did not seem to like the
idea, but if he meditated a retort he was prevented from uttering it
by the advent of a messenger from the matron, which was the signal for
his own departure. He stood up, and went shuffling from one to the
other of his former cronies, shaking hands with them all, but without
speaking. He gripped Jim's hand the hardest, and pumped it up and down
for so long a time that the messenger grew impatient; and then he went
stumbling along the passage, and down the stone stairs to the door,
where the master and matron both stood awaiting him. He received the
money which had been placed in the master's hands for his actual
needs, and scraped his rickety old foot, and pulled his forelock,
after a forgotten fashion, as he listened to their kindly words. Then
they, too, shook hands with him, and accompanied him to the gate,
looking after the feeble old figure until it disappeared.

"I do hope Mrs. Tapper will look after him," said the matron. "He's no
more fit to take care of himself than a baby."

Giles tottered on down the hill, his eyes roaming vaguely over the
landscape, which was looking its fairest on this mellow June
afternoon. Yonder rolled the downs, all golden green in the light of
the sinking sun, nearer at hand lay the meadows, very sheets of
buttercup gold; every leaf and twig of the hedgerow was a-glitter,
too--all Nature, it seemed, had arrayed itself in splendour to
correspond with the old pauper's sudden access of wealth. Not that any
such fancy crossed his dazed mind. As he shuffled along he thought of
how he had walked this way last year, with Jim at his side, on one of
their rare outings. They had, in fact, been on their way to the
parsonage, and Jim, who had been a farm labourer in a previous state
of existence, had called his attention to the "for'ardness" of the
potatoes which were growing where the hay grew now.

Giles paused mechanically, and gazed at the billowing grass; and then
he went on a little, and stopped again at the next gap in the hedge,
where Jim had pointed out the splendid view of Branston.

"I could wish," he muttered, as he turned away, "we was goin' to tea
at the rectory now."

Farther down the road was a bench where it was the old paupers' custom
to sit awhile on