He came to an old, fiddle-headed nag that had been a pensioner at Windyhough these many years, and stayed and chatted with him with the ease that comes of long comradeship. “We’re in the same plight, lad,” he growled--“old, and left at home, the two of us. Ay, we’re thrown on the lumber-heap, I reckon.” He went out by and by; and his face cleared suddenly like wintry sunlight creeping over a grey stubble-field, as he saw Martha cross from the mistals with a milking-pail over each well-rounded arm. And, because there seemed little else to to, he stopped to praise the trim shape of her. “And your cheeks, Martha,” he added, after a pause--“there’s some warm wind been at ’em, or they’d never look so bonnie.” “Winds blow cold up hereabout,” said Martha demurely, setting down her pails. “And my cheeks are my own, Simon Foster, by your leave.” Simon had known this game of give-and-take with a lass in the days before he grew harder and more keen on battle. He returned now with ease to habits forsworn until the Rising left him derelict among the women. “Nay, but they’re not, as the bee said to the clover.” “For shame, Simon--and at your age, too!” “At my age! I’d teach ye I’m young if rheumatiz was not like a hive o’ bees about me.” She twisted a corner of her apron, half hid her face with it; and Simon admitted to himself that the brown eyes looking into his “might be tempting, like, to a younger lad than me.” “At my age a man’s just beginning to know women,” he said persuasively. “It takes a long ’prenticeship, Martha. You can learn to break in a horse, or do smithy work, or aught useful like, in a lile few years. But to learn the way of a woman--durned if it isn’t a long job and a tough job, Martha.” “We’re very simple, if you men weren’t blind as bats at midday.” “Oh, ay; you’re simple!” put in Simon, with a quiet chuckle. “Simple as driving sows to market.” So then Martha put a hand to each of her milking-pails. “I’d best be getting on with my work. If you’re likening me to a sow----” “There, there! It wasn’t you lass; it was women not just so bonnie--the most part o’ women, I mean.” Martha lingered. The deft flattery had pleased her, and she was willing to surrender any casual defence of her own sex. “Well, the most part o’ women, Simon, they’re feather-witted maybe. I’ll own as much.” “And like sows,” went on the other, with patient explanation of his theme. “A man chooses his straight road and sticks to it, but a sow, when you want to get her Lunnon way, why, you’ve just to twist her by the tail, backward foremost, and pretend you want her to head straight for Scotland.”