"Ern," she called quietly, with a chuckle, deep and secret as the gurgle of water pouring from a long-throated jug; and with a faint movement of her hips she made room for him in the sand beside her. CHAPTER II COW GAP Honeymoons are not for the class that does the world's dirty work; but joy can be seized by the simple of heart even in the conditions we impose upon the poor. Ernie Caspar after his marriage with Ruth Boam settled down with his bride in Old Town to enjoy the fruits of victory. The young couple had been lucky to find a cottage in the Moot; for even in those days accommodation for the working-class was as hard to find in Beachbourne as elsewhere. The cottage, too, was appropriately situated for them in every way. It was close to the yard of the Southdown Transport Company, where Ernie's work lay; and at the bottom of Borough Lane, at the top of which was the Manor-house, where lived Mr. and Mrs. Trupp, who had seen Ruth through her trouble, and had befriended Ernie from his boyhood. "D'you remember that first time ever we rode up to Old Town together tarp o the bus?" asked Ernie of his bride, one evening as they passed the great doctor's house on the way to Beau-nez. "Hap I do," Ruth answered, amused at her lover's intense seriousness. "And do _you_ remember what I said to you?" insistently. "Ne'er a word," answered Ruth, casual and teasing--"only it was no-account talk. That's all I remember." "I pointed you out Mr. Trupp's house," Ernie continued solemnly, "and I says to you--_He brought me into the world_, I says. _That's what he done_." The old roguish black-bird look, which after her winter of despair had been creeping slowly back to Ruth's face in this new spring, gleamed sedately now. "I mind me now," she said. "Leastwise I don't remember what you said, but I remembers what I answered." "What did you answer then?" asked Ernie, suspiciously. "_He done well_, was what I says," answered the young woman gravely. "He did," replied Ernie with exaggerated pomp. "And he done better to settle issalf at my door so I could be his friend if so be he ever gotten into trouble." "One thing I knaw," said Ruth, serious in her turn now. "They're the two best friends e'er a workin woman had." "They are," Ernie agreed. "And she's my god-mother." It was the fact in his life of which on the whole he was most proud and certainly the one for which he was least responsible. "And she aren't yours," he continued, puffed up and self-complacent. "And never will be." He added finally to curb her arrogance. "See she was dad's friend afore ever they married, eether of them." Ruth checked her husband's snobbishness with a tap. "You _are_ grand," she said.