Jan Pooke writhed. He had not heard the news of Kate’s engagement. Somehow it had been kept from, or had not reached, him. The fire had distracted men’s and women’s thoughts from the affairs of Kate, Bramber, and himself. His colour changed, and he flushed purple. He shared the prejudice entertained by farmers and labourers’by all who were semi-educated and wholly uneducated’for the man of culture that was striving to enlighten dull minds and wake torpid intelligences. Parsons and schoolmasters are in the same category. The heavy soul resents being raised to spiritual life, and the heavy mind resents being wakened to intellectual life. It ever will be so, and it ever has been so. A man going along a road found a sodden toper lying in a ditch. He tried to pull him out. “Leave alone!” roared the drunken man. “I likes it, I enjoys it. I’ll knock you down if you don’t let me lie in my ditch. There are effets there, and slugs there, and frogs and toads; get along your own way and leave me where I am.” Pooke and Rose Ash had imbibed the views of their parents and companions, and the prevailing atmosphere in a country parish. They had not risen above it, and their ideas took colour from it. “It was scandalous conduct, was it not, Jan?” asked Rose. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stand it, not half an hour.” “But what can I do?” “What’? do’? Oh, lots!” “I can do lots. I do not see it. If Kitty chooses”’His lips quivered, and he gulped down something. “If Kitty chooses a beggarly schoolmaster instead of you, you must not let the neighbours see you are crestfallen. It will never do in coming out of church for everyone to point at you and say, ‘Poor chap! There he goes, Jan Pooke, whom Kitty Alone would not have; and here comes Mr. Thingamy-jig, whom she prefers so highly, looking like the cock of the walk.’ It would be very shaming, Jan, and I don’t think your dear father would like it terrible much.” “I can do nothing,” said Jan, looking wistfully at the horse’s ears: “if Kitty likes Mr. Bramber, and don’t care for me.” “And if the story of the silver peninks gets about?” “Don’t, Rose!” His face expressed pain. “I don’t wish to hurt you, I wish you well, Jan, you know. I was anxious that you should not be the laughing-stock of Coombe and the neighbourhood. That would be too dreadful. I have such a regard for you. Mind you, I love dear Kitty, but I cannot blind my eyes that her has made a mistake’a happy mistake for you, because, dear, good girl as she is, I do not think that she could ha’ made you happy.” “Why not?” “She would have been eternally axin’ questions which you could never answer.” “There is something in that.” “She’d have been wanting to take you to the bottoms of wells, you know, so as to see the stars by day. You would not like that, Jan?” “No’there is something in that.” “And to make you read that stupid book’Wordsworth, her calls it’in the evening, whilst she knitted. You couldn’t have stood that, Jan?”