He had had a very pleasant day in Manchester. Hamer had treated him royally, and Dandy’s joyous enthusiasm had shed brilliance over the expedition. For once she had shown for him the rare sparkle that she always kept for Wiggie. He had felt free and gay and almost as young as she as they wandered round the Show, tasting the charm of fellowship and mutual interest, but even then it had failed as it had always failed before. He had told her that she must persuade Hamer to take her to the Royal, and she had mocked: “Cows and turnips!” passing on to show rapturous interest in the latest type of plane. He could not know that, five hours before, on the Preston Road, she had decided that Hamer should certainly take this very same party to the Royal. He only felt like a turnip, and wished that his boots were more like those of the nearest showman, and wondered if he could possibly tolerate an overcoat with a waist to it. And when they had turned their backs on the city lights, she had wriggled from under the rug to look behind her over the hood, and had sighed: “Dear Manchester!” It had always been for her a city of wonder and delight, paved and padded by the genie-hands of Hamer’s gold, but there hung no gleam of hard cash over it to-night, only the will-o’-the-wisp lantern of new love. But Lanty remembered the Thermos flasks and electric hair-curlers, and believed that she turned sadly from the rich man’s city, where such comforts were as common as dog-roses in Westmorland. _He_ would never have an electric thingumbob in _his_ house, he reflected savagely and childishly. They had a Thermos flask already, in spite of him, given to Helwise by Hamer, last Christmas, and she had found it a glorious boon on the servant’s day out, when she happened to want a day out, too. Lanty had had many a cooped-up cup of tea out of it, longing the while with a foolish bitterness for a singing kettle and a fresh brew. The Lady would never give him tea out of a Thermos--he was certain of that. The shock of Wiggie’s illness had laid the final lever to the reopening gulf. During the following anxious weeks, Dandy’s one thought had been for her old friend, so that the new seemed completely put aside; and the latter, hearing her self-reproach and seeing her genuine trouble and anxiety, was more than ever convinced that, in spite of their day together, she belonged to the Wiggies of the world, and could never be rightly his. With a very little incense she might be a half-god--his rebelling soul confessed that!--but he did not mean to burn it. He would swing no single censer, nor strew a single flower.