He progressed across the lawn towards her in his usual rather ponderous fashion, and stood watching. All the light of the sun seemed for him to centre round that slim white figure. It touched the smooth dark silk of her hair with a crown of glory, and found no flaw in the clear pale skin, the rose-red mouth. Those slender hands held out to the dogs, he would have followed them to the end of the earth. He loved all of her, with every thing he had or was. Presently she gave up her hopeless efforts, and, standing to her full height, looked at him across the still barking dogs. “They have forgotten me, the little pigs!” she said. “They won’t even let me pat them.” But Riversley knew, even as dogs do not resent where they love, neither do they forget. CHAPTER V “If I were not a farmer, I would like to be a master mason,” said Ruth Seer very firmly. She was sitting by the roadside, watching the workmen lay the foundation for her first cottage. The process interested her enormously. The master mason at intervals paused in his work and instructed her as to its purport. She was learning the use and meaning of the square, the level, and the plumb-rule. She was also enjoying herself quite a lot. Across her knees lay Bertram Aurelius. He guggled cheerfully in answer, and bit her forefinger vigorously with such teeth as he possessed. Bertram Aurelius had come into the world without benefit of clergy. His father belonged to the B.E.F., his mother was a between-maid, and in the ordinary course of events he should have gone to his own place. But values had shifted considerably during the years of the Great War, and in the year of Peace both male babies, even though unauthorized, and between-maids, had come to be recognized as very distinctly valuable assets. Gladys Bone, Bertram Aurelius’s mother, aged eighteen, was pathetically anxious to please, a trait which had probably assisted in her undoing, and took the good advice meekly, except where Bertram Aurelius was concerned. Here the good ladies, who had with great difficulty scraped together the money to start a rescue home for unmarried mothers in Fairbridge, reasoned with her in vain. She insisted on his certainly somewhat startling combination of names and persisted in calling him by both. She was perfectly unashamed of the fact that he had no authentic father. “Ain’t he beautiful?” seemed to appear to her quite a sufficient answer to those who endeavoured to present the subject in its proper light. And, worst of all, she absolutely refused to be separated from him. The little grey-haired, pink-cheeked spinster, who practically settled such matters, was in despair. In her inmost heart she sympathized with Gladys, Bertram Aurelius being an infant of considerable charm. At the same time she realized that it was almost impossible to find anyone mad enough to engage a housemaid, or even a between-maid, with a baby thrown in.