He was tall and loosely built, with large, strong hands, and, it must be confessed, with unusually large feet. His hair was not well brushed, and looked as if it could not be. His features were indeterminate, but he had large, dark eyes which somehow redeemed them. His clothes were unobtrusive, but whatever he wore he never looked well-dressed. Among the smart young men of the Graftons' large circle of friends, who came down to shoot at Abington or to spend week-ends there, and even those who were not smart but belonged obviously to the same class, he seemed always out of place. This was somewhat of an annoyance to Beatrix, who was apt to complain that there was no reason why he should so persistently take a back seat, considering that they had done all they could to make a friend of him. But it did not annoy Caroline. She had seen once or twice young men among their visitors who did not live and move wholly on the surface of things find something in common with him. He was her protege. She did not even want to see him 'smartened up,' as Beatrix, commenting upon his unaccented appearance, had sometimes suggested as a process that would improve him. The rock-garden, fashioned the previous year out of a disused stone quarry across a paddock from the garden, was full of interest, in this its second flowering season, and attracted visits at all hours of the day. Maurice Bradby had worked hard with hands and brains at its construction, and knew more about what was growing in it than any of its owners. He had had few opportunities of acquiring garden knowledge in the provincial town in which most of his life had been spent, but he sucked in and assimilated such knowledge without effort, and added to it by close observation, and to a lesser extent by study of his subject. All subjects that had to do with nature found this eager response in him, and Worthing, a countryman by birth and upbringing, had said more than once that he had never had a pupil so easy to teach. Bradby found his voice the moment they were clear of the tennis lawn. "What did you mean about the system being wrong just now?" he asked. She looked up at him with a smile. "I don't think I said it was wrong, did I?" she said. "I said that it wanted the right people to make it work." He seemed to be considering this, and she said, half jestingly, "I know you think everything is right in the country." "It's right for me," he said simply. "I suppose it's right for you, too, isn't it?" "Yes; but then look how you and I are placed." He considered this too. "We're not placed in the same way," he said. "I'm part of the machine, and I'm learning to be a still more important part of the machine." "Well, am I not part of the machine too? If we were just here to enjoy ourselves, as some people do buy country houses just to enjoy themselves, I suppose that would mean standing apart from the machine. But we aren't like that, are we?"