“Yes ... not quite----” His meaning slipped elusively away, and he stifled her in a warm tweed hug. “It’s splendid having you all day long like this, isn’t it? though that’ll have to stop directly I start work. I fixed it up with Mrs. Thomas this morning, before I met you. She was a bit astonished that I wanted to work like an ordinary farmhand, and consulted her two sons about it ... snobbish young cubs who were officers in the war. They said I could clean out the shippons on Saturday mornings, if I tipped the man who usually does it.” “It sounds a good arrangement--for somebody. Doug, did _they_ say anything about Parc Gooth and who we weren’t to trust?” “The Laceys,” promptly. “They’re thieves and swindlers and never paid up their rent at all, so they’ve no right to ours; the Gregsons have, but they’ve sub-let to the Abbotts, who drove away the Todys who are coming back tomorrow; and Mrs. Thomas says we can trust _them_. Mrs. Tody’s her sister.” Ursula collapsed on to a flat stone, overwhelmed by the sweet wholesome primitive state of affairs into which their flight from complex London had landed them. Doug had followed their post-Doreen conversation in the boarding house, by an impetuous day on which he handed in his immediate resignation to the Knapsack Club, bought a _Devon and Morcar Post_, and broke it to his mother--or rather smashed it over her--that he and Ursula had decided to emigrate to the remote West Country, and become farmers. The Knapsack Club subscribed to present him with a silver-topped walking-stick; his mother had a heart-attack; and in the _Post_ they found Parc Gooth advertised as “To Let furnished.” Doug had some money of his own, not very much, but sufficient to keep them both for a couple of years or so, until he had learned farming. So the Barrisons corresponded with the Laceys, who apparently lived in Nottingham; and liking the sound of Parc Gooth, they took it for three months. They sent the Laceys half their rent in advance, who in reply hoped they would find everything comfortable, including a handy man and his equally handy wife, Mr. and Mrs. Tody, attached to the house since its infancy, who would be upon the premises when Mr. and Mrs. Barrison arrived, to be used as convenient. “Directly we’ve got our sea-legs, we can sling ’em out,” said Doug. “Their name’s a bit ominous.” “Oh, people are never like their names, really....”