She exclaimed impulsively: "Alferd, don't 'ee sell the horses and van." Alfred scratched his head, looking sheepishly at his mother. He understood her very well, and shared most of her cut-and-dried opinions, cherishing even her admonitions. All his life he had had good reason to respect and admire her sterling common sense, less rare amongst Arcadians than is generally supposed. He replied uneasily: "That means losing good business, Mother. Folks want more and more nowadays, and they want it in a hurry." "Leave well alone, Alferd." "Suppose well can't be left alone? I ain't one to complain; I'm grateful to the Lord for His blessings, but if another likely young feller started a motor-'bus, he'd down-scramble me." "I allow you knows best about that." She sighed again. He could see that she was profoundly affected. He went on very slowly, thinking as he spoke: "And there's others.... You rub it well into me that this cottage'd hold more than a man and his mother. If I bring the others here, I must think of them. I'd like to do handsomely by them as come after us. Mother," his voice trembled a little, "it's more to me than you think for, but the old van must go. Our folk won't stay homealong. I'll do a big business carrying people instead of parcels." Mrs. Yellam rose. "If you give me they others, Alferd, I'll put up with this wondersome change. God's ways be our ways, if we look humbly into 'em. I did hear tell t'other day of a motor-hearse. Don't 'ee carry me to my grave in one!" Alfred solemnly reassured her, and began to fill his pipe. As a rule, he took a Sunday nap after dinner, whilst his mother was washing up. At three, he would stroll along the village street, combining business with pleasure, picking up gossip and booking orders for the coming week. Later, he might walk in the park with a companion, not always of the opposite sex. He liked a wit-sharpening talk with a man, sensible, perhaps, that his own wits had not too sharp an edge to them. The women of the village were unanimous in pronouncing him a true Yellam. All the men of his family were good to look on--stoutly-built fellows, broad-sterned and broad-shouldered, slow of speech and movement, slow, too, to wrath, patient under adversity and modest under prosperity, solid and stolid, kind to animals and children, and racy of the soil. Upon this particular Sunday, Alfred took the high-road earlier than usual. Fate, rather than inclination, directed his steps towards the Vicarage. For the moment his van and a pair of horses filled his mind. Back of these lay a pleasant wish to pass the time of day with Fancy Broomfield. No doubt she was feeling very homesick. He wondered what she would have to say upon the subject of motor-'buses. He divined in her a vein of sentiment, which appealed to him the more strongly because it was absent in the red-cheeked, bouncing girl whom he had considered, temporarily, as a future wife. From her he had escaped--thank the Lord!