“Things always seem sudden when they come,” Mattie retorted briskly. “Planning makes no difference. Look how folks know they’re going to die from the very minute they’re born, and yet they’re mighty surprised about it when it happens!” “Folks don’t plan to die.... Leastways, them as does seldom brings it off. And that brings me back like to what I was trying to say. If you stop over long on the edge of a jump you take root afore you think.” “I shan’t have much root to bother about if I go to Canada!” Mattie laughed. “Saving your presence, Mr. Nelson, there’s precious little I’d mind leaving behind.” The old postman shook his head. “You strike roots afore you know. Everything as you do each day is a root o’ some sort. Even folks as has been in prison knows what it is to strike roots.” The privet hedge came into Mattie’s mind, together with that past look on Mrs. Grisedale’s face, and the clinging touch of Mrs. Ellwood’s hand.... But she laughed again. “They’re roots as is easy pulled up, I should say!” she said cheerfully. “Folks in prison, I mean.... As for me, I’ve always been on the go, so to speak. I’ve never settled down.” “You can’t _not_ settle!” Dick said suddenly, in a loud voice that was almost threatening. “Don’t you make any mistake, Mrs. Kirkby. Life settles you. Time settles you. You can’t _not_ settle!” The annoyance she had been keeping in check rose at that to a strong head, but it was succeeded almost at once by a feeling of pity. Dick looked so old, standing there, weighed down by his heavy bag, and with the fine spring sunlight showing up his wrinkles. He was jealous, she said to herself, because he felt old, and because, perhaps, he, too, had wanted to go to Canada. She could have laughed now at the thought that they were the same age. In the pride of her new joy she felt like a girl beside him,--a girl with her strength to draw at, and the whole wide world before her. “Ay, well, I don’t see as we need quarrel about it,” she said amiably. “Likely what you say’s right most of the time, if it isn’t always. Anyway, Canada or no Canada, it’s a bonny morning!” But Dick was already shambling away towards the office, wheezing as he went, and grumbling to himself as an old dog grumbles when he meets a young one. She smiled as she saw him stumble over a stone, and stop in a rage to kick it from him. Thrusting the letters in at the office with a shaky hand, he swung about crossly and disappeared round a corner of the building. V With the smile still on her lips, Mattie turned herself round and went back into the kitchen. Dick was a grumpy old thing, she thought cheerfully, and, like many other old people, firmly convinced that his dismal view of life was the only possible one. But she could not help feeling sorry that he had gone away in a rage. On a day that should have been joy from dawn to set, she did not like to think that she had had even the shadow of a dispute with such an old acquaintance.