They went across the field, black-horned cattle following them curiously. Occasional cottages sparsely dotted the straight road leading to Liddleshorn. Two new ones, with vivid roofs of smooth tiles running up in conical shape to a chimney like an exaggerated pimple, had a blue metal plate lettered with white between the narrow doors. “You are pretty safe in saying that every singularly ugly cottage is tenanted by the county police. Mrs. Hone lives at this next one with the bush of Jew’s mallow.” They went in single file up the narrow flag path. Sheets of white candytuft crept coldly along the edge of the borders from the wooden gate to the door. In the little patch of kitchen garden row after row of cabbage with a blue bloom looked to Pamela like a generously flung out art carpet. The man at the best shop in Liddleshorn had shown her one just that shade. Straight ahead, across the railway bridge, a train shot past, the tails of smoke like drifting opal under the bright sun. Mrs. Hone was hobbling about her garden. “Poor old dear! She looks like a camel whose hump has slipped. Now, you must say nothing, look nothing--or you’ll spoil my bargain. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Hone. How’s the rheumatism?” The sweet wrinkled face lifted and a thin voice said shrilly: “It aint what you call rheumatism, ma’am; it’s paralism, that’s what I tells Dr. Frith.” “You’re busy in your garden. I’ve been working very hard in mine. Your broad beans are in blossom. And you’ve planted out your French marigolds already.” “Aye. But I doubt the frost ’ull nip ’em.” She laughed; the pretty, brainless cackle of a very old woman--the light laugh something like a child’s and yet with the knell of decay in it. “When I plants out they little seedlin’s I thinks o’ my children--all planted out; some in London, some on the hill. Some livin’ to blossom, some nipped by the frost. I’ve had thirteen, bless you! You’ll step inside?” They went into the tiny living room, the strangely twisted mistress painfully leading the way. At a round table an old man sat at tea--bread, lettuce that had bolted, a handful of spring onions. The mahogany tray that Mrs. Clutton coveted was on a ledge beside the low-burning fire. The old wife stepped up to her husband and shook him none too gently by the shoulder, dropping her head at the same time, and shouting: “Get up and let the ladies come to the fire.” To them she added apologetically: “He’s very old. I’m only seventy-eight, but he’s pretty nigh eighty. Deaf, too. I can’t make him hear--not when I wants him to do anything. I very offen say to him, ‘You don’t want to hear; you don’t want to hear, that’s what it is,’ I says.” He turned round savagely at the touch of her hand on his shoulder and looked at the two women in light gowns on the threshold. “What are you doing?” he demanded gruffly. “Damn it all, I means to have my tea.”