"Rose--you know--how can you?--that's worse than alone, surelye!" "Nonsense! What's more natural that one of my servants should come with me, since my husband can't?" "Your servant...." "Yes, my servant." Caro, regardless of the suet on her hands, hid her face in them. "Oh, Rose, I can't tell him--I daren't. Why, he turned away Handshut because of you." "He did not, miss--you're impudent!" "Well, why shud fäather git shut of the best drover he ever had on his farm, if it äun't----" "Be quiet! I won't hear such stuff. I'm not going to be a prisoner, and miss my fun just because you and Ben are jealous fools." "But I daren't tell him where you've agone." "I dare say you won't have to--I'm not staying out all night." She laughed one of her coarse screaming laughs, with the additional drawback of mirthlessness; then she went out of the room, leaving Caro sobbing into suety palms. Outside in the yard, Handshut stood by the pump, apparently absorbed in studying the first lights of Triangulum as they kindled one by one in the darkening sky. Rose pattered up to him in the shabby white kid shoes that had been so trim and smart five years ago. "I've changed my mind." "Then you äun't coming." "Yes, I am." "Then you haven't changed it." § 20. The roads outside Rye were dark with people. A procession was forming up at Rye Foreign, and another at the foot of Cadborough Hill. Outside the railway station a massed band played something rather like the Marseillaise, while the grass-grown, brine-smelling streets were spotted with stragglers, hurrying up from all quarters, some carrying torches that flung shifting gleams on windows and gable-ends. Immense barrels of tar had been loaded on four waggons, to which four of the most prosperous farmers of the district had harnessed teams. Odiam was of course not represented, nor was Grandturzel, but three bell-ringing sorrels had come all the way from Kitchenhour, while the marsh farms of Leasan, the Loose, and Becket's House, accounted for the rest. The crowd surged round the waggons, cheered, joked, sang. The whole of Rye was there--prosperous tradesmen from the High Street or Station Road, innkeepers, farmers, shop-assistants, chains of fishermen in high boots, jerseys, and gold ear-rings, coast-guards from the Camber, and one or two scared-looking women clinging to stalwart arms. Rose shrank close to Handshut, though she did not take his arm. Sometimes the crowd would fling them together, so that they were close as in an embrace, at others they would stand almost apart, linked only by sidelong glances. The flare of a torch would suddenly slide over Handshut's face, showing her its dark gipsy profile, and she would turn away her eyes as from something too bright to bear. Every now and then the crowd would start singing inanely: "Soles, plaice, and dabs, Rate, skate, and crabs. God save the Queen!"