His team stood patient, heavy and shining compared to her small pony. The curious light of sunset began to creep over the Downs, turning their tan to a rosy orange. “Fine weather,” nodded Lovel. He turned to his horses, and began to adjust a bit. The rooks were settling on the patch that he had ploughed. He stooped down, and picking up a lump of earth, crumbled it between his fingers. Clare, observing his fine, bony, downward-bent face, knew that he was reflecting. Sure enough, he raised it to say, “How would you bring them up, if you had children?” “Have you been thinking about children?” she asked, amused. “It’s thinking about children,” he replied seriously, “that shows you the things we base life on. There’s money, there’s humbug, and there’s death. What do we say over and over again to children? ‘Don’t touch that, you’ll break it, it’ll cost money to replace.’ ‘Be polite,’--that’s humbug. ‘Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself,’--that’s death, really, or at any rate the fear of injury. A child doesn’t see much difference between being alive or being dead. As for money, or for time, which is the same thing, it takes him years to get his brain round those two things. It’s a fine and careful system we’ve got, haven’t we? While I was following the plough, I was having an imaginary conversation with a child. ‘If I was dead,’ said he, ‘I shouldn’t know that I was dead, so what would it matter?’ And I couldn’t find an answer in my head.” “But if you had children of your own,” said Clare, “you would find yourself bringing them up in the same way.” “Oh, perforce,” he replied, “but that’s the end of all theories. We’re chained by necessity; it’s the wire across the path that brings the horse down in mid-gallop. We’ve got to teach our children caution,--the fear of death,--merely to keep them alive until they grow up. And all that we should enjoy teaching them is obscured by the don’ts and the shoutings-out to keep their limbs whole and our crockery unbroken.” “Well,--and humbug?” she said. “That’s civilisation. ‘What’s polite,’ asks the child, and ‘what’s a lie?’” “Would you like to have children of your own?” asked Clare. “Yes,” replied Lovel briefly, and changed the subject. “I have to bring a handful of sheep home for Mr. Morland from the fair at Marlborough on Tuesday. Will you be going to the fair? Horses, mostly.” “I’ll go with you,” said Clare in delight, clapping her hands. “Better meet me there, as ’twere by chance,” said Lovel, suddenly a little grim. “‘Miss Warrener taking up with gipsies,’--I can hear them talk. No, meet me there, make out you’re interested in a pony, and fetch me to have a look at him.” “But we can ride home together?” said Clare crestfallen. “We’ll meet outside the town and come home over the Downs. I don’t want all the gig-wheels in amongst my sheep.” She laughed suddenly, seeing how practical he was, and liking it.