Mary slept badly. Earlier in the evening, when Morgan and Gladys had fallen asleep, she had caught the landlady on the stairs and begged that her supper might be brought to her in her bedroom. There she had devoured a solitary plate of the famous rabbit-pie, but hearing below her the sound of many men’s voices and still dreading to be mistaken for Abner’s wife, she had not dared to go downstairs and find him. Instead of thinking any more about it she decided to go to bed, creeping gently under the sheets for fear of disturbing the children. But she could not sleep. The bedroom was immediately over the room in which supper was served, and she could not hear so many voices buzzing beneath her without wanting to catch what they were saying. As the evening wore on the house grew noisier. It seemed as if they would never go to bed; and when, at last, the noise ceased and she had nearly fallen asleep, the moonlight, beating in through the muslin-curtained window, awoke Morgan. He said that he was thirsty, and after much groping, she gave him water from the ewer on the washhand-stand. Thus awakened from the sleep that followed his train-sickness, the excitement of his strange surroundings kept him going for a couple of hours of questions about the fair. ‘Why bain’t Abner up here?’ he said at last. This was more than she could explain. ‘If you don’t keep quiet, my son,’ she said, ‘I shall take you right out and give you to Abner for the night. Then you’ll cry to come back to your mother. You’re a little nuisance, that’s what you are!’ She tucked him away and huddled him against her breast away from the moonlight, and so, at length, he fell asleep. Next morning, Abner, who had slept well, was early astir, but no earlier, it seemed, than the rest of the world. In the yard below him the owner of the stabled horses was up and grooming them. He asked Abner to give him a hand and offered him a shilling for his trouble. ‘I reckon they’m going to make wonnerful prices to-day,’ he said. An opaline sky, covered with the faintest veil of mist, promised a hot morning. The landlord of the Harley Arms had not yet risen, but the girls were sweeping the passage and setting the table for breakfast in the long room, and his wife was watching them with sleepy eyes, while she sipped a cup of tea. Abner joined her, paid the bill for the night, five shillings, and took some tea with bread and butter to the door of Mary’s room. He knocked and called to her, and she answered in a voice that seemed alarmed by his nearness. ‘I bain’t going to eat you _nor_ the children,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a fine day. How long do you want to keep us waiting?’ She assured him timidly that they wouldn’t be long, and by half-past nine they had become part of the stream of traffic flowing along the road from Redlake to Brampton Bryan, raising clouds of hot dust under the heavy green of the trees.