"But it _isn’t_ cooking butter!" interposed Joan hastily. But she laughed all the same, and Hieronymus, much humbled by his mistake, made no more attempts to sell butter. He seemed thoroughly contented with his life at Little Stretton, and in no hurry to join his friends in Wales. He was so genial that every one liked him and spoke kindly of him. If he was driving in the pony-carriage and saw any children trudging home after school, he would find room for four or five of them and take them back to the village in triumph. If he met an old woman carrying a bundle of wood, he immediately transferred the load from herself to himself, and walked along by her side, chatting merrily the while. As for the tramps who passed on the highroad from Ludlow to Church Stretton, they found in him a sympathetic friend. His hand was always in his pocket for them. He listened to their tales of woe, and stroked the "property" baby in the perambulator, and absolutely refused to be brought to order by Mrs. Benbow, who declared that she knew more about tramps than he did, and that the best thing to do with them was to send them about their business as soon as possible. "You will ruin the reputation of the Green Dragon," she said, "if you go on entertaining tramps outside. Take your friends over to the other inn!" She thought that this would be a strong argument, as Hieronymus was particularly proud of the Green Dragon, having discovered that it was patronized by the aristocrats of the village, and considered infinitely superior to its rival, the Crown Inn opposite. But the historian, so yielding in other respects, continued his intimacies with the tramps, sometimes even leaving his work if he chanced to see an interesting-looking wanderer slouching past the Green Dragon. Joan had become accustomed to these interruptions. She just sat waiting patiently until Hieronymus came back, and plunged once more into the History of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, or the Attitude of the Foreign Powers to each other during the latter years of Henry VIII. "I’m a troublesome fellow," he would say to her sometimes, "and you are very patient with me. In fact, you’re a regular little brick of a secretary." Then she would flush with pleasure to hear his words of praise. But he never noticed that, and never thought he was leading her further and further away from her surroundings and ties, and putting great distances between herself and the exciseman. So little did he guess it that one day he even ventured to joke with her. He had been talking to her about John Richard Green, the historian, and he asked her whether she had read "A Short History of the English People." She told him she had never read it. "Oh, you ought to have that book," he said; and he immediately thought that he would buy it for her. Then he remembered the exciseman’s library, and judged that it would be better to let him buy it for her.