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anything in the
record. Therefore the Chapins listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs.
Shonts.
"But why--why--why--did So-and-so do so-and-so?" Sophie would
demand from her seat by the pothook; and Mrs. Cloke would answer,
smoothing her knees, "For the sake of the place."
"I give it up," said George one night in their own room. "People don't
seem to matter in this country compared to the places they live in. The
way she tells it, Friars Pardon was a sort of Moloch."
"Poor old thing!" They had been walking round the farms as usual

before tea. "No wonder they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made
for it. Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell to keep it in the family.
The octagonal room with the moulded ceiling next to the big bedroom
was hers. Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs?"
said Sophie.
"About the Torrell cousins and the uncle who died in Java. They lived
at Burnt House--behind High Pardons, where that brook is all blocked
up."
"No; Burnt House is under High Pardons Wood, before you come to
Gale Anstey," Sophie corrected.
"Well, old man Cloke said--"
Sophie threw open the door and called down into the kitchen, where the
Clokes were covering the fire "Mrs. Cloke, isn't Burnt House under
High Pardons?"
"Yes, my dear, of course," the soft voice. answered absently. A cough.
"I beg your pardon, Madam. What was it you said?"
"Never mind. I prefer it the other way," Sophie laughed, and George
re-told the missing chapter as she sat on the bed.
"Here to-day an' gone to-morrow," said Cloke warningly. "They've paid
their first month, but we've only that Mrs. Shonts's letter for guarantee."
"None she sent never cheated us yet. It slipped out before I thought.
She's a most humane young lady. They'll be going away in a little. An'
you've talked a lot too, Alfred."
"Yes, but the Elphicks are all dead. No one can bring my loose talking
home to me. But why do they stay on and stay on so?"
In due time George and Sophie asked each other that question, and put
it aside. They argued that the climate--a pearly blend, unlike the hot
and cold ferocities of their native land--suited them, as the thick
stillness of the nights certainly suited George. He was saved even the
sight of a metalled road, which, as presumably leading to business,
wakes desire in a man; and the telegraph office at the village of Friars
Pardon, where they sold picture post-cards and pegtops, was two
walking miles across the fields and woods.
For all that touched his past among his fellows, or their remembrance
of him, he might have been in another planet; and Sophie, whose life
had been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals,
had no wish to leave this present of God. The unhurried meals, the

foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths of
soft sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by
their hunger or thirst; the good grass beneath their feet that cheated the
miles; their discoveries, always together, amid the farms--Griffons,
Rocketts, Burnt House, Gale Anstey, and the Home Farm, where
Iggulden of the blue smock-frock would waylay them, and they would
ransack the old house once more; the long wet afternoons when, they
tucked up their feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against the
apple-trees, and talked together as never till then had they found time to
talk--these things contented her soul, and her body throve.
"Have you realized," she asked one morning, "that we've been here
absolutely alone for the last thirty-four days?"
"Have you counted them?" he asked.
"Did you like them?" she replied.
"I must have. I didn't think about them. Yes, I have. Six months ago I
should have fretted myself sick. Remember at Cairo? I've only had two
or three bad times. Am I getting better, or is it senile decay?"
"Climate, all climate." Sophie swung her new-bought English boots, as
she sat on the stile overlooking Friars Pardon, behind the Clokes's barn.
"One must take hold of things though," he said, "if it's only to keep
one's hand in." His eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty
fields. "Mustn't one?"
"Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey. I dare say you could
hire it."
"No, I'm not as English as that--nor as Morristown. Cloke says all the
farms here could be made to pay."
"Well, I'm Anastasia in the 'Treasure of Franchard.' I'm content to be
alive and purr. There's no hurry."
"No." He smiled. "All the same, I'm going to see after my mail."
"You promised you wouldn't have any."
"There's some business coming through that's amusing me. Honest. It
doesn't get on