“We’re dull enough at close quarters--just a lot of rough working-men digging up God’s gold out of the land. I’d an idea you didn’t approve of us; thought we starved our dogs or something!” There came to him a recollection of the last meeting in the Lane. “You told me once you were home-sick for a collection of oddments of some sort--Tantalums, Thermos flasks and hair-curlers!” It was she who laughed now, and so infectiously that Bluecaster, making for his carriage, stopped and asked to be introduced. “I didn’t include _him_ in my estimate,” Lanty added, when he had passed on, leaving a word for Hamer, and a message of sympathy for Helwise, struggling with a cold. “He’s different from the rest of us--you’d know it on the top of Skiddaw. _He_’s never done any digging, and I don’t want him to.” “Digging might be good for him,” Dandy ventured, and was growled at for her pains. “No, it wouldn’t! It might alter him, that’s all, but he’d lose all the other things. He’s the best chap in Britain! We’re here to do the digging for him, as we’ve always been. You don’t understand. They mean a lot to us--the little thoughtfulnesses and the bottles of cough-medicine and the words in season. If Bluecaster was digging, he’d be too busy to bother. That’s what _he_’s here for. But of course it can’t mean anything to you.” “You’re rather rude, I think!” she replied gently, with a kind of humorous resignation at which he smiled in spite of himself. Up the street, on the green, a group of caravans was stationed, the lights of a merry-go-round filling the winter evening with colour. A rollicking tune came down to them, mixed with the shouts and laughter of the crowd.