“A pair of you, _I_ think!” she remarked rather disconcertingly, as she turned and marched off. The Duke returned to his cottage and decided, over a pint of hock and a bottle of seltzer, that he had come out of the interview with much credit. He did not hurry back to work after lunch. Why, he reflected, should he? None of the other men were working on their allotments. This fact seemed rather strange to him, since he overlooked the circumstance that harvest was in full swing and all his supposed compeers busy from dawn till late evening in the fields; but, knowing that he was strange to his surroundings, he waited patiently for an explanation. He lit his pipe--a clay pipe, coloured by and borrowed from one of his stableboys, and sat on the fence in an agreeable meditation. The rain had ceased, and the afternoon was mild. “What more in reality,” he exclaimed, “does a man want than this? I was quite right to insist on an entirely simple dinner.” He paused and added: “After all I will do a little weeding.” When he had done quite a little weeding, a thought struck him. He repaired to the cottage and called Frank. Frank appeared; he also wore corduroys and other suitable habiliments. “Very good, Frank, very good. You’re really an intelligent man. If a young lady calls, you’re an idiot.” “I--I beg your Grace’s pardon?” “If a young lady calls, you’re to appear to be an idiot.” The Duke, as he spoke, smiled over the reflection that his order to Frank embodied nothing very unusual. “Very good, your Grace! What’s Monsieur Alphonse to be?” “If he must exist at all he’d better be in bed--with something a trifle infectious,” answered the Duke, after a moment’s reflection. “Very good, your Grace. Burgundy or champagne at dinner? The chambertin appears to have recovered from the journey.” “Then let me have the chambertin,” said his Grace. “Dinner at seven. I feel as if I should be hungry. I am now going to take a walk.” On his walk through what proved to be exceedingly pretty country, the Duke meditated, in admiration mingled with annoyance, on the excellent organisation of English rural parishes. The immediate notice taken of his arrival, the instantaneous zeal for his moral welfare, argued much that was good--the Duke determined to say a few words about it in the House of Lords--but, on the other hand, it certainly rendered more difficult his experiment in the simple life--to say nothing of necessitating his adventurous excursion into the Somerset dialect. “She is probably actuated,” he concluded, “by a groundless fear that I shall resort to the Nonconformist chapel.”