In the country. Down in Hertfordshire. Her father was a farmer, a small farmer. The trouble was that Violet couldn't bear the country. She wouldn't stay a day in it if she could help it. She was all for life. She'd been about a year in town. No, Winny hadn't known her for a year. Only for a few months really, since she came to Starker's. She'd been in several situations before that. She was assistant at the ribbon counter at Starker's. The clerks didn't have anything to do with the shop girls as a rule: but Winny thought the custom silly and stuck up. Anyhow, she'd taken a fancy to Violet, seeing her go in and out. And Violet needed a deal of looking after. She was like a child. A spoiled child with little ways. Winny had tried her best to take care of her, but she couldn't be taking care of her all the time. She was glad she had gone home, though she was so fond of her. But she was afraid she wouldn't stay long. "You think," said Ransome, "she'll come back?" "I shouldn't be surprised if she turned up any day." "And you'll take care of her?" "Yes, I shall take care of her." He looked at her, and for a moment it revived, it stirred in his heart, that odd mingled sense of absurdity and tenderness. * * * * * She would come back, he told himself; she would come back. Meanwhile he could call his soul his own, to say nothing of his body. Under all the shock of it Ransome felt a certain relief in realizing that Violet Usher had gone. It was as if some danger, half discerned, had been hanging over him and had gone with her. But winter and spring passed, and she did not come back. They passed monotonously, like all the springs and winters he had known. He had got his rise at Michaelmas; but he was free from the obsession of the matrimonial idea and all that he now looked forward to was an indefinite extension of the Athletic Life. In June of nineteen-four he entered for the Wandsworth Athletic Sports. He hoped to win the silver cup for the Hurdle Race, against Fred Booty, as he had done last year. Wandsworth was sure of its J. R. F. Ransome. Putney and Wimbledon, competing, were not sending any better men than they had sent last year. And this year, as Booty owned, Ransome was "a fair masterpiece," a young miracle of fitness. His admirable form, hitherto equal to young Booty's, was improved by strenuous training, and at his worst he had what Booty hadn't, a fire and a spirit, a power, utterly incalculable, of sudden uprush and outburst, like the loosening of a secret energy. When he flagged it would rise in him and sting him to the spurt. But, while it made him the darling of the crowd, it was apt to upset the betting of experts at the last minute.