"I couldn't have worked the estate if he had," said Roger simply. "Lady Louisa told Dick he ought to stick to it, and make me enforce it, but I said I should have to go if he did. The best horse out of his stable when a man died, and the best cow out of his field. When Dick understood what heriot meant he would not do it. He was always open-handed." Annette looked at the little church tolling its bell, and at the three firs gathered round it. "There is a place like this in _The Magnet_," she said. "That is why I seem to know it, though I've never seen it before. There ought to be a Vicarage just behind the firs, with a little garden enclosed from the bracken." "There is," said Roger, and then added, with gross ingratitude to its author, "I never thought much of _The Magnet_. I like the bits about the places, and he says things about dogs that are just right, and--robins. He's good on birds. But when it comes to people----!" Annette did not answer. It was not necessary. Roger was under way. "And yet," he added, with a tardy sense of justice, "Stirling's in some ways an understanding man. I never thought he'd have made allowance for old Betty Hesketh having the wood mania and breaking up his new fence, but he did. Such a fuss as Bartlet kicked up when he caught her at his wood-stack! Of course he caught her at it. Old folks can't help it. They get wood mania when they're childish, if they've known the pinch of cold for too many years. And even if their sheds are full of wood--Betty has enough to last her lifetime--they'll go on picking and stealing. If they see it, they've got to have it. Only it isn't stealing. Mr. Stirling understood that. He said he'd known old ladies the same about china. But the people in his books!" Roger shook his head. "Didn't you like Jack and Hester in _The Magnet_! I got so fond of them." "I don't remember much about them. I dare say I should have liked them if I had felt they were real, but I never did. It's always the same in novels. When I start reading them I know beforehand everybody will talk so uncommonly well--not like----" "You and me," suggested Annette. "Well, not like me, anyhow. And not like Janey and the kind of people I know--except perhaps Black. He can say a lot." "I have felt that too," said Annette, "especially when the hero and heroine are talking. I think how splendidly they both do it, but I secretly feel all the time that if I had been in the heroine's place I never could have expressed myself so well, and behaved so exactly right, and understood everything so quickly. I know I should have been silent and stupid, and only seen what was the right thing to say several hours later, when I had gone home." Roger looked obliquely at her with an approving eye. Here indeed was a kindred soul!