He had hoped very much to get through his call without coming across Freeland's wife and children, and was greatly relieved to find Tod, seated on a window-sill in front of his cottage, smoking, and gazing apparently at nothing. In taking the other corner of the window-sill, the thought passed through his mind that Freeland was really a very fine-looking fellow. Tod was, indeed, about Malloring's own height of six feet one, with the same fairness and straight build of figure and feature. But Tod's head was round and massive, his hair crisp and uncut; Malloring's head long and narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped. Tod's eyes, blue and deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring's, blue and deep-set, on the nearest thing they could light on. Tod smiled, as it were, without knowing; Malloring seemed to know what he was smiling at almost too well. It was comforting, however, that Freeland was as shy and silent as himself, for this produced a feeling that there could not be any real difference between their points of view. Perceiving at last that if he did not speak they would continue sitting there dumb till it was time for him to go, Malloring said: “Look here, Freeland; about my wife and yours and Tryst and the Gaunts, and all the rest of it! It's a pity, isn't it? This is a small place, you know. What's your own feeling?” Tod answered: “A man has only one life.” Malloring was a little puzzled. “In this world. I don't follow.” “Live and let live.” A part of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a part of him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he was going to follow was not at first patent. “You see, YOU keep apart,” he said at last. “You couldn't say that so easily if you had, like us, to take up the position in which we find ourselves.” “Why take it up?” Malloring frowned. “How would things go on?” “All right,” said Tod. Malloring got up from the sill. This was 'laisser-faire' with a vengeance! Such philosophy had always seemed to him to savor dangerously of anarchism. And yet twenty years' experience as a neighbor had shown him that Tod was in himself perhaps the most harmless person in Worcestershire, and held in a curious esteem by most of the people about. He was puzzled, and sat down again. “I've never had a chance to talk things over with you,” he said. “There are a good few people, Freeland, who can't behave themselves; we're not bees, you know!” He stopped, having an uncomfortable suspicion that his hearer was not listening. “First I've heard this year,” said Tod. For all the rudeness of that interruption, Malloring felt a stir of interest. He himself liked birds. Unfortunately, he could hear nothing but the general chorus of their songs. “Thought they'd gone,” murmured Tod. Malloring again got up. “Look here, Freeland,” he said, “I wish you'd give your mind to this. You really ought not to let your wife and children make trouble in the village.”