"Yes--there's nothing for it but that. We'll go down and stay at the Camber. You'll be safe with me, and I've got a little money put by." Considering how much she had already given him, it was perhaps strange that she shuddered a little at this open venture. "You'll be good to me, Joe!" "Won't I, just!" Something in the wistfulness and humility of her appeal had touched him to the heart; he clasped her to him with a passion for once free from roughness, and for one moment at least had every intention of sticking to her for ever. § 8. It was not from Pete that Reuben first heard of his daughter's goings-on. Caro's benevolent trust in humanity had been misplaced, and at the Seven Bells where he called for a refresher on arriving at Rye station, various stragglers from Boarzell eagerly betrayed her, "just to see how he wud täake it." Reuben received the news with the indifference due to outsiders. But he was not so calm when Pete told his tale at Odiam. "The bitch," he growled, "I'll learn her. Dancing wud a sailor, you say she wur, Pete?" "Yes," said Pete, "and wud her hair all tumbling." "I'll learn her," repeated Reuben. But he never had the chance. By the time the two males had sat up till about three or four the next morning, they came to the conclusion that Caro must have seen Pete watching her and run away. "She'll never come back," said Pete that evening--"you täake my word fur it." "That's another of my daughters gone fur a whore." "Who wur the fust?" "Why Tilly--goes off wud that lousy pig-keeper up at Grandturzel. She's no better than Caro." "And there wur Rose," added Pete, anxious to supply instances. Reuben swore at him. He felt Caro's disappearance more acutely than he would allow to show. First, she had left him badly in the lurch in household matters--he had to engage a woman to take her place, and pay her wages. Also she had caused a scandal in the neighbourhood, which meant more derisive fingers pointed at Odiam. Pete was now the only one left of his original family--his children and their runnings-away had become a byword in Peasmarsh. In the course of time he heard that Caro was living with Joe Dansay down at the Camber, but he made no effort to bring her back. "I'm shut of her," he told everyone angrily. If Caro preferred a common sailor and loose living to the dignity and usefulness of her position at Odiam, he was not going to interfere. Besides, she had disgraced his farm, and he would never forgive that. It struck him that his relations with women had been singularly unfortunate. Caro, Tilly, Rose, Alice, had all been failures--indeed he had come to look back on Naomi as his only success. Women were all the same, without ambition, without self-respect, ready to lick the boots of the first person who stroked them and was silly enough not to see through their wiles.