Near Wycombe a woman rose from under the hedge as the Goslings approached, and came out into the middle of the road. She was a stout, florid woman, whose age might have been anything between forty and fifty. Her gait and the droop of her shoulders, rather than the flaccidity of her rather loose skin, gave her the appearance of being past middle age. "Goot morning," she said as the Goslings came up. "If it iss no inconvenience I would like to come with you." She spoke with a foreign accent, thickening her final consonants and giving a different value to some of her vowels. "Where to?" asked Blanche curtly. "Ah! that! what does it matter?" returned the woman. "I have been living with a farmer's wife further back along the road there. But she was not company for me. She was common. Now I see that you and your mother are not common. And I do not care to live with farmers' wives. But where we go? Does it matter? We all go to find work in the fields--aristocrat as much as peasant. But iss it not better that we who are not peasants should go together?" Millie giggled surreptitiously, and Mrs Gosling appeared conscious of the fact that some one was addressing them. "We're goin' 'ome," she remarked, and Millie gently prodded her in the back. "Goin' 'ome," repeated Mrs Gosling firmly. "Ach! You are lucky. There are few that have homes now," replied the strange woman. "I had a home, once, how long ago. Now, during two months, I have no home." She was evidently on the verge of tears. "Mother's got a touch of the sun," Blanche said in a low voice, "and we have to pretend we're going home. You needn't tell her we're not." "Have no fear," replied the stranger. "I am all that is most discreet, yes." Blanche hardened her heart. This woman took too much for granted. "I don't see it's any use your coming with us," she said. "Ach! we others, we should cling together," said the stranger, with a large gesture. "We're nobody," replied Blanche, curtly. "It iss well to say that. I know. There iss good reason. I, too, must tell the common people that I am a nobody, I call myself, even, Mrs Isaacson. But between us there iss no need to say what iss not true. I can see what you are. Although I am not English, I have lived many years already in England, and I can see. It iss well that we cling together? Yes?" "Oh!" burst out Blanche. "You're Mrs Isaacson, are you? I've heard of you." For one moment Mrs Isaacson's fine eyes seemed to look inwards in an instantaneous review of her past. "Ach! so! Then we are friends already," she said cautiously. "I heard of you from Aunt May," said Blanche, and the faint air of respect with which she pronounced the name did not escape the notice of the alert Jewess.