Next afternoon the Colonel was crossing Saffrons Croft on his way to the Manor-house for tea, when a majestic young woman, a baby in her arms, sauntering under the elms watching the cricket, smiled at him suddenly. He stopped, uncertain of her identity. "I'm Mrs. Caspar, sir," she explained. "We met you the other night on the Head--Ern and me." "Oh, I know all about you!" replied the Colonel, glancing at the baby who lifted to the sky a face like a sleeping rose. "My word!--she's a bonny un." "She grows, sir," replied Ruth, cooing and contented. "We gets her all the air we can. So we come here with the children for a blow of the coolth most in general Saraday afternoons. More air than in the Moot." "Where's Caspar?" asked the Colonel. "Yonder under the ellums, sir, along with a friend. Come about the classes or something I did hear." "The class-war?" asked the Colonel grimly. "No, sir," answered Ruth. "Classes for learning you learning, I allow. Man from the North, I yeard say. Talks funny--foreign talk I call it." Just then the Colonel's glance fell on a child, slim as a daisy stalk, and with the healthy pallor of a wood-anemone, hiding behind Ruth's skirt and peeping at the stranger with fearless blue eyes that seemed somehow strangely familiar. "And what's your name, little Miss Hide-away?" he asked, delighted. "Little Alice," the child replied, bold and delicate as a robin. The fact that the child was obviously some four years old while Ernie had not been married half that time did not occur to the Colonel as strange. He glanced at the young mother, noble in outline, and in her black and red beauty of the South so unlike the child. "She doesn't take after her mother and father," he said, with the reckless indiscretion of his sex. Then he saw his mistake. Ruth has run up signals of distress. Ernie, who had now joined them, as always at his best in an emergency, came quickly to the rescue. "Favours her grandmother, sir, I say," he remarked. "Like my boy," commented the Colonel, recovering himself. "I don't think anybody'd have taken our Jock for his father's son when he joined us at Pindi in 1904--eh, Caspar?" The two old Hammer-men chatted over days in India. Then the Colonel went on up the hill, the eyes of the child still haunting him. The Manor-house party were having tea on the lawn, under the laburnum, looking over the sunk fence on to Saffrons Croft beyond, when the Colonel joined them. Mrs. Lewknor was already there; and young Stanley Bessemere, the Conservative candidate for Beachbourne East. He and Bess were watching a little group of people gathered about a man who was standing on a bench in Saffrons Croft haranguing. "Lend me your bird-glasses, Miss Trupp," said her companion eagerly. He stood up, a fine figure of a man, perfectly tailored, "Yes," he said. "I thought so. It's my friend." "Who's that?" asked the Colonel.