‘Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.’ ‘No, you haven’t; what you mean is that, whether you like it, or whether you do not, you have to put up with it.’ ‘No, I don’t mean that. Miss Hopgood, Cohen and me, we are the best of friends, but whenever he comes here, he allus begins to argue with me. Howsomever, arguing isn’t everything, is it, my dear? There’s some things, after all, as I can do and he can’t, but he’s just wrong here in his arguing that wasn’t what I meant. I meant what I said, as I had to like it.’ ‘How can you like it if you don’t?’ ‘How can I? That shows you’re a man and not a woman. Jess like you men. _You’d_ do what you didn’t like, I know, for you’re a good sort—and everybody would know you didn’t like it—but what would be the use of me a-livin’ in a house if I didn’t like it?—with my daughter and these dear, young women? If it comes to livin’, you’d ten thousand times better say at once as you hate bein’ where you are than go about all day long, as if you was a blessed saint and put upon.’ Mrs Caffyn twitched at her gown and pulled it down over her knees and brushed the crumbs off with energy. She continued, ‘I can’t abide people who everlastin’ make believe they are put upon. Suppose I were allus a-hankering every foggy day after Great Oakhurst, and yet a-tellin’ my daughter as I knew my place was here; if I was she, I should wish my mother at Jericho.’ ‘Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?’ said Clara. ‘Why, my dear, of course I do. Don’t you think it’s pleasanter being here with you and your sister and that precious little creature, and my daughter, than down in that dead-alive place? Not that I don’t miss my walk sometimes into Darkin; you remember that way as I took you once, Baruch, across the hill, and we went over Ranmore Common and I showed you Camilla Lacy, and you said as you knew a woman who wrote books who once lived there? You remember them beech-woods? Ah, it was one October! Weren’t they a colour—weren’t they lovely?’ Baruch remembered them well enough. Who that had ever seen them could forget them? ‘And it was I as took you! You wouldn’t think it, my dear, though he’s always a-arguin’, I do believe he’d love to go that walk again, even with an old woman, and see them heavenly beeches. But, Lord, how I do talk, and you’ve neither of you got any tea.’ ‘Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?’ inquired Baruch. ‘Not very long.’ ‘Do you feel the change?’ ‘I cannot say I do not.’ ‘I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to believe in Mrs Caffyn’s philosophy?’ ‘I cannot say that, but I may say that I am scarcely strong enough for mere endurance, and I therefore always endeavour to find something agreeable in circumstances from which there is no escape.’ The recognition of the One in the Many had as great a charm for Baruch as it had for Socrates, and Clara spoke with the ease of a person whose habit it was to deal with principles and generalisations.