Sarah and Selina behaved with the utmost decorum. This was unusual when a stranger entered their domain. Ruth wondered while she brushed. It seemed they acknowledged some greater right. Perhaps he had belonged to the man who had so loved and cared for Thorpe before she came. And he had left all—and the dog. Presently the dog lay down in a chosen place from which he could command a view of both the front drive and the road from the station. He lay with his nose between his paws and watched. After supper Ruth Seer went and sat with him. The stars looked down with clear bright eyes. The night wind brought the scent of a thousand flowers. An immense peace and beauty filled the heavens. Yet, as she sat, she fancied she heard again the low monotonous boom from the Channel to which people had grown so accustomed through the long war years. She knew it could not really be; it was just fancy. But suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She had lost no one out there—she had no one to lose. But she was an English woman. They were all her men. And there were so many white roads, from as many stations. The next morning the stranger dog had vanished, after, so Miss McCox reported bitterly at 6 A. M., a night spent on the spare-room bed. It was a perfect wonder of a morning. Even on that first morning when the stars sang together it could not have been more wonderful, thought Ruth Seer, looking, as she never tired of looking, at the farm that was hers. The five Shorthorns chewed the cud in the four-acre field. The verdict of Miss McCox, the cowman and the boy, upon them was favourable. To-morrow morning Ruth would have her first lesson in milking. The Berkshire sow, bought also at Uckfield market, had produced during the night, somewhat unexpectedly, but very successfully, thirteen small black pigs, shining like satin and wholly delectable. The only blot on the perfection of the day was the behaviour of Selina. At 11 A. M. she was detected by Miss McCox, in full pursuit of the last hatched brood of chicken. Caught, or to be fair to Selina, cornered, by the entire staff, at 11.30, she was well and handsomely whipped, and crept, an apparently chastened dog, into the shelter of the house. There, however, so soon as the clang of the big bell proclaimed the busy dinner hour, she had proceeded to the room sacred to the slumbers of Miss McCox and, undisturbed, had diligently made a hole in the pillow on which Miss McCox’s head nightly reposed, extracting therefrom the feathers of many chickens. These she spread lavishly, and without favouritism, over the surface of the entire carpet, and, well content, withdrew silently and discreetly from the precincts of Thorpe Farm.