"Give me a bit of cheese and a mug of beer by the----" "Roadside." "But the show's got to----" "Earn its keep." "Earn its keep. I'm going to sleep. Them as wants to walk on can walk on." Mr. Copas rose and went into the caravan and his wife followed him. The wagon had not yet caught them up. "Shall we walk on?" said Matilda. "If it's a straight road." "Oh! There'll be signposts. We'll maybe find a wood." So they walked on. She was wearing a blue print frock with the sleeves rolled up to her elbow. She had very pretty arms. "I sha'n't stop 'ere long," she said. "No? Why not?" "It ain't good enough. Nothing's good enough if you stop too long at it. Uncle'll never be any different." "Will any of us ever be different?" "I shall," she said, and she gave a queer little defiant laugh and her stride lengthened so that she shot a pace or two ahead of him. She turned and laughed at him over her shoulder. "Come along, slowcoach." He grunted and made an effort, but could not catch her. So they moved until they came to a little wood with a white gate in the hedges. Through this she went, he after her, and she flung herself down in the bracken, and lay staring up through the leaves of the trees. He stood looking down at her. It was some time before she broke the silence and said: "Sit down and smell. Ain't it good? . . . Do you think if you murdered me now they'd ever find me?" "What a horrible idea?" "I often dream I've committed a murder. They say it's lucky. Do you believe in dreams?" "Napoleon believed in dreams." "Who was he?" "He was born in Corsica, and came to France with about twopence halfpenny in his pocket. He made himself Emperor before he was forty, and died in exile." "Still, he'd had his fling. I'm twenty-one. How old are you?" "Twice that and more." "Are you rich or clever or anything like that?" "No!" he smiled at the question. "Nothing like that." She sat up and chewed a long grass stalk. "I'm lucky." She gave a little sideways wag of her chin. "I know I'm lucky. If only I'd had some education." "That's not much good to you." "It makes you speak prop'ly." That was a view of education never before presented to him. Certainly the sort of education he had doled out had done little to amend the speech of his Thrigsbian pupils. "Is that all you want--to speak properly?" "Yes. You speak prop-properly." "Nothing else." "There is a difference between gentlemen and others. I want to have to do with gentlemen." "And ladies?" "Oh! I'll let the ladies look after theirselves." "_Them_selves." "Themselves." She flushed at the correction and a dogged sulky expression came into her eyes. She nibbled at the grass stalk until it disappeared into her mouth. For a moment or two she sat plucking at her lower lip with her right finger and thumb. Through her teeth she said: "I _will_ do it." Contemptuously, with admirable precision, she spat out the grass stalk against the trunk of a tree.