The elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm resented the carriage being sent down for her. She said she wasn’t so old that she could not walk a few miles to see her own grandson. Both she and Eleanor agreed that he was going to be like Anthony. His odd ways, it was, that so strongly reminded the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm of his father at the same age. They came together over John Anthony, the elder and the younger Mrs. Strong’nth’arm. “It’s her artfulness,” had argued the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm to herself at first; “pretending to want my advice and hanging upon my words; while all the time, I reckon, she’s laughing at me.” But the next day or the day after she would come again to answer delightedly the hundred questions put to her--to advise, discuss, to gossip and to laugh--to remember on her way home that she had kissed the girl, promising to come again soon. Returning late one afternoon she met Anthony on the moor. “I’ve left her going to sleep,” she said. “Don’t disturb her. She doesn’t rest herself sufficiently. I’ve been talking to her about it. “I’m getting to like her,” she confessed shamefacedly. “She isn’t as bad as I thought her.” He laughed, putting an arm about her. “You’ll end by loving her,” he said. “You won’t be able to help it.” “It’ll depend upon you, lad,” she answered. “So long as your good is her good I shall be content.” She kissed him good night for it was growing dusk. Neither he nor Eleanor had ever been able to persuade her to stay the night. With the nursery, which had been the former Lady Coomber’s dressing-room, she was familiar, having been one of the housemaids. But the big rooms on the ground floor overawed her. She never would enter by the great door, but always by a small side entrance leading to the house-keeper’s room. Eleanor had given instructions that it should always be left open. He walked on slowly after he had left his mother. There, where the sun was sinking behind the distant elms, she lay sleeping. At the bend of the road was the old white thorn that had witnessed their first kiss. Reaching it he looked round stealthily and, seeing no one, flung himself upon the ground and, stretching out his arms, pressed his lips to the sweet-smelling earth. He laughed as he rose to his feet. These lovers’ rhapsodies he had once thought idle nonsense! They were true. Going through fire and water--dying for her, worshipping the ground she trod on. This dear moorland with its lonely farmsteads and its scattered cots; its old folks with their furrowed faces, its little children with shy wondering eyes; its sandy hollows where the coneys frisked at twilight; its hidden dells of fern and bracken where the primroses first blossomed; its high banks beneath the birches where the red fox had his dwelling; its deep woods, bird-haunted: always he would love it, for her sake.