‘Not on a Sunday, young man,’ she said. Abner thanked her clumsily. George kissed her, and for a moment she dropped her stiffness and clung to him. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Abner. ‘Good-bye, dad.’ But Mr Malpas was already asleep, his mouth sagging beneath the edge of his handkerchief. Abner picked up his bundle in the taproom and he and George went out into the grilling sunshine. The Eleventh Chapter GEORGE MALPAS, having taken a fancy to Abner at first sight, had determined to ask his own wife to give him a lodging. The relation between the two young men had begun with a quick, spontaneous liking on either side. Abner was only too glad to see a friendly face, not being built, as was Mick Connor, for picaresque adventure, and feeling that it would be well to settle down again. George Malpas, on the other hand, liked him because he represented something new, because he had exhausted the possibilities of the cloggers’ company, which led no farther than the Pound House—a place which he could only visit with irritation since Badger, the keeper, had cut him out with Susie Hind—and because the idea of a presentable stranger living in his own house appealed to him on the score of variety as well as from the financial point of view. As they left the Buffalo, George expounded his project to Abner. It did him good, he said, to talk, and particularly to talk to a man of his own age who could understand him. If Abner had been married he would have realised that it was useless talking to women who pretended to listen, but never gave a thought to what a man was saying. The thought of his marriage always roused him to bitterness. It had been imposed on him, indeed, by the anxiousness of his mother, who adored him, her only son, beyond words and, under the influence of chapel, had conceived it her particular duty to save his soul from hell. Hell, in the eyes of Mrs Malpas, meant neither more nor less than sexual promiscuity, and seeing in the handsomeness of George a spiritual danger, she had followed the advice of St Paul and married him safely, as she thought, before worse happened. She herself had chosen a wife for him. Indirectly, for she knew that he was wilful and easily scared, she had contrived to make him fall in love with the daughter of a local farm-bailiff, Morgan Condover, a steady, and, as it seemed, a solid man, who managed the outlying members of the Powys estate. Mary Condover, the daughter, was a little older than George; a shy beauty, with whom the lad soon fell in love. George, as the only son of the innkeeper at Chapel Green, was considered a good match, and Mrs Malpas played her cards so well that within six months of falling in love George found himself married and installed in a house of his own. He was happy: Mrs Malpas could see that for herself, and she thanked Heaven that she had been permitted to save her son alive.