‘Now, Dibb dear, grace, if you please,’ commanded Daphne, with a mischievous side-glance at the unknown. That French grace of poor Martha’s was a performance which always delighted Daphne, and she wanted the wayfarer to enjoy himself. The ‘ongs’ and ‘dongs’ were worth hearing. Gravely the submissive Martha complied, and with solemn countenance asked a blessing on the meal. ‘You can have all the fowl,’ said Daphne to her guest; ‘Martha and I like bread and cheese ever so much better.’ She tore one of the big brown loaves in two, tossed one half to Martha, and broke a great knob off the other for her own eating, attacking it ravenously with her strong white teeth. ‘You are more than good,’ replied the stranger with his pleasantly listless air, as if there were nothing in life worth being energetic about; ‘you are actually self-sacrificing. But, to tell you the honest truth, I have not the slightest appetite. I had my second breakfast at one o’clock, and I had much rather carve that elderly member of the feathered tribe for you than eat him. I wish he were better worthy of your consideration.’ Daphne looked at him doubtfully, unconvinced. ‘I know you’re disparaging the bird out of kindness to us,’ she said; ‘you might just as well eat a good luncheon. Martha and I adore bread and cheese.’ She emphasised this assertion with a stealthy frown at poor Miss Dibb, who saw her dinner thus coolly confiscated for the good of a suspicious-looking interloper. ‘You doat upon Gruyère, don’t you, Martha?’ she demanded. ‘I like it pretty well,’ answered Miss Dibb sulkily; ‘but I think the holes are the nicest part.’ The stranger was cutting up the meagre fowl, giving the wing and breast to Daphne, the sinewy leg to Martha, who was the kind of girl to go through life getting the legs of fowls and the back seat in opera-boxes, and the worst partners at afternoon dances. Finding the unknown inflexible, and being herself desperately hungry, Daphne ended by taking her share of the poultry, while her guest ate a few strawberries and munched a crust of bread, lying along the grass all the while, almost at her feet. It was a new experience, and the more horrified Martha looked the more Daphne enjoyed it. What was life to her but the present hour, with its radiant sun and glad earth flushed with colour, the scent of the pines, the hum of the bees, the delight of the butterflies flashing across the blue? Utterly innocent in her utter ignorance of evil, she saw no snare in such simple joys, she had no premonition of danger. Her worst suspicion of the stranger was that he might be poor. That was the only social crime whereof she knew. And the more convinced she felt of his poverty, the more determined she was to be civil to him.