And what attracted and interested Sabre was that the little man, living here his hunted life among the terrific "doings" of the seven female Farguses, firmly believed that he was working out and working towards his designed purpose. He had "worked back" his every event in life, he said, and it had brought him so inevitably to Penny Green and to skipping about among the seven that he was assured it was the keyed path to his purpose. He amazed Sabre by telling him, without trace of self-consciousness and equally without trace of religious mania, that he was waiting, daily, for God to call upon him to fulfil the purpose for which he was placed there. He expected it as one expects a letter by the post. When he talked about it to Sabre he positively trembled and shone with eagerness as a child trembling and shining with excitement before an unopened parcel. One day Sabre protested. "But look here, Fargus. Look here, how are you going to know when it comes? It might be anything. You don't know what it is and--well, you won't know, will you?" The little man said, "I believe I shall, Sabre. I've 'worked back' for years, as far as ever my memory will carry, and everything has been so exactly keyed that I'm convinced I'm in the way of my purpose. I believe you can feel it if you've waited for it like that. I believe you're asked 'Ready?' and I want to say, whatever it is, 'Aye, Ready!'" Mysterious and awful suggestion, Sabre thought. To believe yourself at any moment to be touched as by a finger and asked "Ready?" "Aye, Ready!" Mysterious and awful intimacy with God! IV And then there were the Perches--"Young Perch and that everlasting old mother of his", as Mabel called them. Sabre always spoke of them as "Young Rod, Pole or Perch" and "Old Mrs. Rod, Pole or Perth." This was out of what Mabel called his childish and incomprehensible habit of giving nicknames,--High Jinks and Low Jinks the outstanding and never-forgiven example of it. "Whatever's the joke of it?" she demanded, when one day she found Sabre speaking of Major Millet, another neighbour and a great friend of hers, as "Old Hopscotch Millet." "Whatever's the joke of it? He doesn't play hopscotch." "No, but he bounds about," Sabre explained. "You know the way he bounds about, Mabel. He's about ninety--" "I'm sure he isn't, nor fifty." "Well, anyway, he's past his first youth, but he's always bounding about to show how agile he is. He's always calling out 'Ri--te _O_!' and jumping to do a thing when there's no need to jump. Hopscotch. What can you call him but Hopscotch?" "But why call him _anything_?" Mabel said. "His name's Millet." Her annoyance caused her voice to squeak. "Why call him _anything_?" Sabre laughed. "Well, you know how a ridiculous thing like that comes into your head and you can't get rid of it. You know the way."