Inside an arbour—which faced east, and thus avoided the bad weather—there sat a complicated person who was dry. She looked at the drenched world with a pleased expression, and would smile when a cloud would lay down on the village, or when the rain sighed louder than usual against her solid shelter. Ink, paperclips, and foolscap paper were on the table before her, and she could also reach an umbrella, a waterproof, a walking-stick, and an electric bell. Her age was between elderly and old, and her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of slight but perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that she had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often cried. She was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most becomingly over her beautiful hair. After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on May the 14th, 1842.” She laid down her pen and said “Ugh!” A robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth (“our dull stepmother”) bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa’s son, and never went to heaven.” There was the sound of a train, and presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took a fresh piece, and was beginning to write, “On May the 14th, 1842,” when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, “I am sorry for Flea Thompson.” “I daresay I am sorry for him too,” said the lady; her voice was languid and pleasant. “Who is he?” “Flea’s a liar, and the next time we meet he’ll be a football.” Off slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour provided several. “But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?” “Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He grazes the Rings.” “Ah, I see. A pet lamb.” “Lamb! Shepherd!” “One of my Shepherds?” “The last time I go with his sheep. But not the last time he sees me. I am sorry for him. He dodged me today.” “Do you mean to say”—she became animated—“that you have been out in the wet keeping the sheep of Flea Thompson?”