will receive letters and messages some day and the style of our friends
is apt to be reminiscent of John Bunyan ... The car will be at the door
tomorrow to catch the ten-thirty, and I will give you the address of
the rooms that have been taken for you ... Beyond that I have nothing
to say, except to beg you to play the part well and keep your temper.
You behaved very nicely at dinner.'

I asked one last question as we said good night in the hall. 'Shall I
see you again?'

'Soon, and often,' was the answer. 'Remember we are colleagues.'

I went upstairs feeling extraordinarily comforted. I had a perfectly
beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all glorified and coloured
with the thought of the girl who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in the garden.
I commended the wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of
his intermediary, for I'm hanged if I would have taken such orders from
anyone else.

CHAPTER TWO

'The Village Named Morality'

UP on the high veld our rivers are apt to be strings of pools linked by
muddy trickles--the most stagnant kind of watercourse you would look
for in a day's journey. But presently they reach the edge of the
plateau and are tossed down into the flats in noble ravines, and roll
thereafter in full and sounding currents to the sea. So with the story
I am telling. It began in smooth reaches, as idle as a mill-pond; yet
the day soon came when I was in the grip of a torrent, flung breathless
from rock to rock by a destiny which I could not control. But for the
present I was in a backwater, no less than the Garden City of
Biggleswick, where Mr Cornelius Brand, a South African gentleman
visiting England on holiday, lodged in a pair of rooms in the cottage
of Mr Tancred Jimson.

The house--or 'home' as they preferred to name it at Biggleswick--was
one of some two hundred others which ringed a pleasant Midland common.
It was badly built and oddly furnished; the bed was too short, the
windows did not fit, the doors did not stay shut; but it was as clean
as soap and water and scrubbing could make it. The three-quarters of an
acre of garden were mainly devoted to the culture of potatoes, though
under the parlour window Mrs Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs,
and lines of lank sunflowers fringed the path that led to the front
door. It was Mrs Jimson who received me as I descended from the station
fly--a large red woman with hair bleached by constant exposure to
weather, clad in a go