Weyburn pronounced for a plate of her home-cured. She had children, the woman told him--two boys and a girl. Her husband wished for a girl. Her eldest boy wished to be a sailor, and would walk miles to a pond to sail bits of wood on it, though there had never been a sea-faring man in her husband's family or her own. She agreed with the lady and gentleman that it might be unwise to go contrary to the boy's bent. Going to school or coming home, a trickle of water would stop him. Aminta said to her companion in French, 'Have you money?' She chased his blood. 'Some: sufficient. I think.' It stamped their partnership. 'I have but a small amount. Aunt was our paymaster. We will buy the little boy a boat to sail. You are pale.' 'I 've no notion of it.' 'Something happened it Ashead.' 'It would not have damaged my complexion.' He counted his money. Aminta covertly handed him her purse. Their fingers touched. The very minor circumstance of their landlady being in the room dammed a flood. Her money and his amounted to seventeen pounds. The sum-total was a symbol of days that were a fiery wheel. Honour and blest adventure might travel together two days or three, he thought. If the chariot did not pass:--Lord Ormont had willed it. A man could not be said to swerve in his duty when acting to fulfil the master's orders, and Mrs. Pagnell was proved a hoodwinked duenna, and Morsfield was in the air. The breathing Aminta had now a common purse with her first lover. For three days or more they were, it would seem, to journey together, alone together: the prosecution of his duty imposed it on him. Sooth to say, Weyburn knew that a spice of passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess; but he fancied an absolute reliance on Aminta's dignity, and his respect for her was another barrier. He begged the landlady's acceptance of two shillings for her boy's purchase of a boat, advising her to have him taught early to swim. Both he and Aminta had a feeling that they could be helpful in some little things on the road if the chariot did not pass. Justification began to speak loudly against the stopping of the chariot if it did pass. The fact that sweet wishes come second, and not so loudly, assured him they were quite secondary; for the lover sunk to sophist may be self-beguiled by the arts which render him the potent beguiler. 'We are safe here,' he said, and thrilled her with the 'we' behind the curtaining leaded window-panes. 'What is it you propose?' Her voice was lower than she intended. To that she ascribed his vivid flush. It kindled the deeper of her dark hue. He mentioned her want of luggage, and the purchase of a kit. She said, 'Have we the means?' 'We can adjust the means to the ends.' 'We must be sparing of expenses.' 'Will you walk part of the way?' 'I should like it.' 'We shall be longer on the journey.' 'We shall not find it tiresome, I hope.' 'We can say so, if we do.' 'We are not strangers.'