with Mr. Eames, the milk-cart that comes to fetch the
empty cans in the afternoon can bring the bag too."

They stepped out more briskly after that. It was not such a very long
walk to the farm, though certainly more than the two miles Jowett had
spoken of. As they went on, the country grew decidedly pretty, or
perhaps it would be more correct to say one saw that in summer and
pleasant weather it must be very pretty. Geoff, however, was hardly at
the age for admiring scenery much. He looked about him with interest,
but little more than interest.

"Are there woods about here?" he asked suddenly. "I do like woods."

Jowett hesitated.

"I don't know this part of the country not to say so very well," he
replied. "There's some fine gentlemen's seats round about, I believe.
Crickwood Bolders, now, is a fine place--we'll pass by the park wall in
a minute; it's the place that Eames's should by rights be the home farm
to, so to say. But it's been empty for a many years. The family died
down till it come to a distant cousin who was in foreign parts, and he
let the farm to Eames, and the house has been shut up. They do speak of
his coming back afore long."

Geoff looked out for the park of which Jowett spoke; they could not see
much of it, certainly, without climbing the wall, for which he felt no
energy. But a little farther on they came to gates, evidently a back
entrance, and they stood still for a moment or two and looked in.

"Yes," said Geoff, gazing over the wide expanse of softly undulating
ground, broken by clumps of magnificent old trees, which at one side
extended into a fringe skirting the park for miles apparently, till it
melted in the distance into a range of blue-topped hills--"yes, it must
be a fine place indeed. That's the sort of place, now, I'd like to own,
Jowett."

He spoke more cordially again, for Jowett's acquaintance with the
neighbourhood had destroyed a sort of misgiving that had somehow come
over him as to whether his new friend were perhaps "taking him in
altogether."

[Illustration: THEY STOOD STILL FOR A MOMENT OR TWO.]

"I believe you," said the countryman, laughing loudly, as if Geoff's
remark had been a very good joke indeed. Geoff felt rather nettled.

"And why shouldn't I own such a place, pray?" he said haughtily. "Such
things, when one is a _gentleman_, are all a matter of chance, as you
know. If my father, or my grandfather, rather, had not been a younger
son, I should have been