Sir Everard folded his spectacles, put them carefully into his breast pocket, and closed his Virgil. Here was an opportunity of studying a--to him--hitherto quite unknown branch of humanity, after an unexpectedly pleasant fashion. The girl pleased him. He had called her brass and humoured the simile. A shining, solid composition of metal that took a handsome polish and showed itself boldly for what it was. He liked her for her spring of youth, her frank pride of her trade, for having no petty nonsense nor poor pretentiousness to pass for what she was not. He liked her brave independence. There was, he thought, a better modesty in her quiet certainty than any prudish airs and graces could have lent her. “’Twould be a presuming fellow,” he mused, “that would dare to try his gallant ways with such an one, and if he did, I would back my young milliner to teach him a lesson.” She told him how she had, so to speak, graduated in Paris, which accounted, thought he, for a taste that was scarcely indigenous. And her home was between Canterbury and Dover, and she, brought up till seventeen on the farm, the eldest of eleven. Then he knew whence she had drawn that sap of splendid vigour; a hardy flower of English soil. And the chief of his many prides being that he was an Englishman, he was still better content. She would alight, she told him, at “The Rose” at Canterbury, where she would lie the night. And father would fetch her in the morning; for ’twas mortal cold across the downs on a winter’s evening, and ’twas a long drive for the mare even in good weather. “Bravo,” said he. “I, too, halt at ‘The Rose,’ I am glad to know that I shall have such good company. May I sit beside you at supper in the eating-room, my dear young lady?” “Oh, you’re vastly obliging, sir!” said Pamela Pounce, and a faint pink crept, like the colour of a shell, into her smooth, pale cheek, for she had a good eye for a gentleman, and she knew that she was honoured. Her tongue ran on gaily, and he listened with a gentle air of courtesy and an interest which in truth was not assumed. In spite of her sophisticated manner her chatter was very artless. It was a revelation of a character which had remained curiously untouched by the world. The busy mart in which she lived had cast none of its dust upon her soul. Dear, to be sure, how prodigious joyful they would be at home to see her back! “Four years, sir, think on it! I was but a child when I left them, and now I’m a woman!” ’Twas like, indeed, that none would recognise her again, should they just happen to meet, accidental like. She half wished she could have walked in upon them and taken them by surprise. But then: “Father, sir, would ha’ lost the pleasure of coming to fetch me,” and her mother might have been vexed. “Mother’s very house-proud, sir. She’d want to have things pretty for me, and bake cakes and that.”