Because both brother and sister felt that in sailing down to New Cross Gate on the top of a tram, and then along by a line less straight and decided to Greenwich they were escaping from worry, they enjoyed the evening’s trip. Going through Hatcham, Louisa declared that one might be in the country, and thereupon, in her own way, declared that they were in the country, that she and her brother had been left a bit of money, which enabled her to give up work at the factory and wear a fresh set of cuffs and collars every day: this sudden stroke of good fortune also permitted Erb to give up his agitating rigmarole (the phrase was Louisa’s own, and Erb accepted it without protest), and they had both settled down somewhere near Epping Forest; Erb, as lord of the manor, with the vicar of the parish church for slave, and Louisa as the generous Lady Bountiful, giving blankets and home-made jam to all those willing to subscribe to Conservative principles. They had a stroll up the hill to Greenwich Park, Lady Louisa forced to go slowly on account of some aristocratic paucity of breath, and Sir Herbert, her brother, playing imaginary games of golf with a stick and some pebbles, and going round the links in eighty-two. At the Chalet near the Blackheath side of the park they had tea, Louisa’s insistence on addressing her brother by a full title astonishing the demure people at other wooden tables, puzzling them greatly, and causing, after departure, acrimonious debate between husbands and wives, some deciding that Erb and Louisa were really superior people and others making reference to escapes from Colney Hatch. Louisa, delighted with the game of fooling people, darted down the hill, with Erb following at a sedate trot; she stopped three parts of the way down, and Erb found her leaning against a tree panting with tears in her eyes. These tears she brushed away, declaring that something had come to her mind that had made her laugh exhaustedly, and the two went on more sedately through the open way at the side of the tall iron gates, happier in each other’s company than in the company of anyone else, and showing this in the defiant way with which some people hide real emotions. “_You’re_ a bright companion,” said Louisa satirically, as the tram turned with a jerk at the foot of Blackheath Hill. “You ’aven’t made me laugh for quite five minutes.” “I’ve been thinking, White Face.” “My face isn’t white,” protested his sister, leaning back to get a reflection of herself in a draper’s window. “I’ve got quite a colour. Besides, why don’t you give up thinking for a bit? You’re always at it. I wonder your brain—or whatever you like to call it—stands the tax you put on it.” “You’d be a rare old nagger,” said Erb, hooking the tarpaulin covering carefully and affectionately around his sister, “if ever anybody had the misfortune to marry you. It’d be jor, jor, jor, from morning, noon, till night.”