“I went myself with little Henry Morgan and Jessie to a place called Oatham, or something like it, where he last wrote from. He had been an under-gardener there for nearly two years, and we saw the man and his wife who let him a room and looked after him. They said he seemed to be well-off, and of course he would. You know he ate little, smoked and drank nothing, and gave nothing to any known charities. They remembered him very well because he taught them to play cards and was very clean and very silent. ‘As clean as a lady,’ she said to Jessie, who only said, ‘Cleaner.’ You know her way. The man did not like him, I know. He said Aurelius used to sit as quiet as a book and never complained of anything. ‘He never ate half he paid for, I will say that,’ said he. ‘He was too fond of flowers, too, for an under-gardener, and used to ask why daisies and fluellen and such-like were called weeds. There was something wrong with him, something on his conscience perhaps.’ The squire’s agent, a Mr Theobald, said the same when he came in. He thought there was something wrong. He said such people were unnecessary. Nothing could be done with them. They were no better than wild birds compared with pheasants, even when they could sing, which some of them could do, but not Aurelius. They caused a great deal of trouble, said my lord the agent of my lord the squire, yet you couldn’t put them out of the way. He remarked that Aurelius never wrote any letters and never received any--that looked bad, too. ‘What we want,’ said he--‘is a little less Theobald,’ said Jessie, but the man didn’t notice her. ‘What we want is efficiency. How are we to get it with the likes of this Mr What’s-his-name in the way? They neither produce like the poor nor consume like the rich, and it is by production and consumption that the world goes round, I say. He was a bit of a poacher, too. I caught him myself letting a hare out of a snare--letting it out, so he said. I said nothing to the squire, but the chap had to go.’ And that’s all we shall hear about Aurelius,” said Ann. “He left there in the muck of February. They didn’t know where he was going, and didn’t care, though he provided them with gossip for a year to come. The woman asked me how old he was. Before I could have answered, her husband said: ‘About thirty I should say.’ The woman could not resist saying snappily: ‘Fifty’....”