"William moves with the times, a far-seeing man. And snug, with money in bank and credit, too. Mother says he's after my business. I got ahead by buying my motor-'bus. Yes--William Saint might have sneaked my good business. He knows folk far and wide, as I do. That's bread and cheese to a carrier. And he knows how to tickle 'em with pleasant words. That's cakes and ale." He said no more. Fancy felt vaguely troubled. She had taken Alfred's profitable business for granted. Fellow-servants and villagers had assured her, with a sub-acid inflection underlying congratulation, that she was lucky indeed to have got so warm a man as the carrier. Like most of her class, she entertained nebulous ideas about how money was made, although she had been constrained all her life to use such money as came to her thriftily and with a very lively sense of its elusive attributes in slipping through careless fingers. The slow building-up of a business had never engrossed her thoughts. But she knew well enough, poor child, how rapidly such a business may disintegrate, and fall to pieces. That calamity had been her father's bitter experience. They followed the Avon, strolling leisurely up-stream till they reached a small covert much beloved by hunting-men because it always harboured a stout fox. "Let's go in wood," said Alfred. "Won't it be damp, dear?" "I want to talk to you." Her heart beat faster. Something was coming--What? Alfred led the way to a hurdler's hut, a rough shed, where the lovers sat down upon a heap of dry chips. A delicious smell of bark filled the air. George Mucklow had worked here often, before he was dragooned into the Army. With the smell of bark, dominating it, rose the odour of damp earth, always so significant, bearing its double message. From earth we have come; to it we must return. Fancy's sensitive nose could detect yet another odour. An ancient coat, much soiled by time and weather, had been thrown upon the pile of chips. In an olfactory sense the coat was eloquent of labour, of long perspiring hours and all that such hours hold. Fancy's nostrils were not offended. But she refused to sit on it. Alfred, wearing his Sunday best, was not so particular. He wasted little time in preliminaries. And he spoke with a geniality assumed, as Fancy guessed, for her benefit. "The young Captain," he began, "has stirred us all up with his pleasant tongue. Now don't jump! Let me tell my tale."