"Oh! but my sweet Alice!" protested the young woman; "you must move and let these funny people come in. It really isn't good for you, dear, to stand about in the sun like this, and you'd much better go and lie down in the shade for a bit!" She gently pulled the gate from under the cow's chin, and then, laying her hands flat on its side, made as if to push it out of the way. "Well, I never!" declared Mrs Gosling, regarding the performance with much the same awe as she might have vouchsafed to a lion-tamer in a circus. "'Oo'd 'ave thought it'd 'a been that tame?" The cow, after a moment's resistance, moved off with a leisurely walk in the direction of the wood. "Now, you funny people, what do you want?" asked the young woman. Mrs Gosling began to explain, but Blanche quickly interposed. "Oh! do be quiet, mother; you don't understand," she said, and continued, before her mother could remonstrate, "We've come from London." "Goodness!" commented the young woman. "And we want----" Blanche hesitated. She was surprised to find that in the light of her wonderful discovery it was not so easy to define precisely what they ought to want. As the broomstick woman had said, they were "beggars." Fairly confronted with the problem, Blanche saw no alternative but a candid acknowledgment of the fact. "You want feeding, of course," put in the young woman. "They all do. You needn't think you're the first. We've had dozens!" A solution presented itself to Blanche. "We don't really want food," she said. "We've got a lot of tinned things left still, only we're ill with eating tinned things. I thought, perhaps, you might be willing to let us have some milk and eggs and vegetables in exchange?" "That's sensible enough," commented the young woman. "If you only knew the things we have been offered! Money chiefly, of course"--Mrs Gosling opened her mouth, but Blanche frowned and shook her head--"and it does seem as if money's about as useless as buttons. In fact, I'd sooner have buttons--you can use them. But the other funny things--bits of old furniture, warming-pans, jewellery! You should have heard Mrs Isaacson! She was a Jewess who came from Hampstead a couple of months ago, and she had a lot of jewels she kept in a bag tied round her waist under her skirt; and when Aunt May and I simply had to tell her to go she tried to bribe us with an old brooch and rubbish. She was a terror. But, I say"--she looked at the sun--"I've got lots of things to do before sunset." She paused, and looked at the three Goslings. "Look here," she went on, "are you all right? You seem all right." Again Mrs Gosling began to reply, but Blanche was too quick for her. "Tell me what you mean by 'all right'?" she asked, raising her voice to drown her mother's "Well, I never did 'ear such----"