Ruth tilted a knowing chin. "She aren't a neighbour, Mrs. Ticehurst aren't--not prarperly." They were relapsing into broad Sussex as they always would when chaffing. "What are she then?" "She's a cat, sure-ly." The night air, the thronged and brilliant sky, the rare change, the little bit of holiday, inspired and stimulated her. The Martha of much busyness had given place to the girl again. Immersed in the splendid darkness, she was in a delicious mood, cool, provocative, ironical; as Ernie had known her in that brief April of her life before Captain Royal had thrown a shadow across her path. He threaded his arm through hers. Together they climbed the little Wish hill on the sea-front. From the top, by the old martello tower, they looked across the sea, white beneath the moon. Ernie's mood of high statesmanship had passed already. "I don't see this Creeping Death they talk on," he said discontentedly. "Ah," Ruth answered, sagacious in her turn. "Hap it's there though." Ernie turned on her. "I thart you just said..." "No, I didn't then," she answered with magnificent unconcern. "All I say is--War and that, what's it got to do wi' we?" As they came off the hill they met Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor crossing Madeira Walk on their way home. "Where's your friend?" asked the Colonel. "Gone back to his books and learning, sir, I reckon," replied Ruth. "He don't want us." "Ah, you scared him, Mrs. Caspar," chaffed the Colonel. "Scared him back to his revolution," commented Mrs. Lewknor. Ruth laughed that deep silvery bell-like laughter of hers that seemed to make the night vibrate. "He'd take some scaring, I reckon, that chap would," she said. CHAPTER XI THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN Joe Burt had been born at Rochdale of a mother whose favourite saying was: "With a rocking-chair and a piece o celery a Lancasheer lass is aw reet." At eight, she had entered the mill, doffing. Joe had entered the same mill at about the same age, doffing too. He worked bare-footed in the ring-room in the days when overlookers and jobbers carried straps and used them. When he was fifteen his mother died, and his father married again. "Thoo can fend for self," his step-mother told him straightway, with the fine directness of the North. Joe packed his worldly possessions in a chequered handkerchief, especially his greatest treasure--a sixpenny book bought off a second-hand bookstall at infinite cost to the buyer and called _The Hundred Best Thoughts_. Then he crossed the common at night, falling into a ditch on the way, to find the lodging-house woman who was to be his mother for the next ten years drinking her Friday pint o beer. He was earning six shillings a week at the time in a bicycle-shop. Later he entered a big engineering firm and, picking up knowledge as he went along, was a first-class fitter when he was through his time.