At first he barely noticed my presence on the other seat, mistaking me in the gloom—for I was sitting in the shadow of the house—for some village yokel having his fill before going on his way home to a scolding wife. Gradually, however, it dawned upon him that the occupant of the other bench was not one of the stray labourers who patronised the place. As for myself, I was wondering whether I should retire before he entered into conversation with me, or run the risk, and see if matters turned out to my advantage. “Quiet place, this,” he said, tentatively. “I’m glad to say it is,” I answered, lazily. Always answer lazily when a well-bred Englishman addresses you for the first time. It impresses him. Young Gascoyne gathered from my voice that he was presumably talking to an equal. He became friendly. “I suppose you mean,” he said, laughing, “that you came here for quiet, and that you mean to get it.” “No, I don’t quite mean that. So long as I can sleep where it is quiet, I don’t care very much about absolute silence.” “Then I may talk to you? The evenings are so beastly dull down here.” I made a very shrewd guess at the way he had been spending the earlier part of that evening. The possibility of six brothers to fight must have been exciting enough, but then Harry Gascoyne belonged to the class that wants amusing all the time. “The stillness of the nights here is awful—especially depressing if you’ve been used to keep it up till the small hours of the morning.” “I should have thought that it would have been a welcome relief.” “I don’t find it so.” “I suppose you’re too young to feel the need of rest.” He laughed. Evidently he thought it a good joke. “Oh, I say, you’re not much older than I am, if at all. Of course I can’t quite make out in this light, but——” “I’ve seen a good deal,” I interrupted. “You’ve come from town, haven’t you?” “How did you guess?” “Oh, one can always tell.” “Sorry I look such a cockney.” “Everybody who comes from town isn’t a cockney. It would be rather awful if it were so.” “Then how could you tell?” “Oh, the best of people get a bit careless in the country. It’s something in the way town men put on their clothes. Fellows who live in the country will tell you that it isn’t quite good form to wear your clothes too well, but that’s all rot. They’re jealous because they know they’re slovenly.” I liked the way he talked, and, finding me companionable, he showed not the least desire to move. A new friend always interested me, so I put away any unpleasant reflections as to our future relations, and abandoned myself to the pleasure of a novel and pleasant companionship. My cousin chattered on, and gradually, as will almost invariably happen when two young men are talking together—the more especially over the bowl—the eternal feminine dominated. He was obviously neurotic, for all his healthy skin and philistine view of life in general.