Joan Daventry looked at Richard Walton. The blinds were down and the window closed; so that the room was dark and cool. But a glance at her manager's face told her sufficiently what the heat was like outside. He had been abroad since daybreak and he was the color of a ripe mulberry. Joan Daventry looked to him for assistance. But, though his eyes were fixed with a momentary intentness upon Cynthia, he did not give it. He spoke on another subject. "If you go, Miss Cynthia, I hope you will leave at home the pearls you are wearing round your throat. We are cutting the corn to-day and there are a good many men about of whom I know nothing at all. More hands came in last night than we had use for. It's all right, of course, but I shouldn't wear those pearls." "Of course not," said Cynthia. "I will put them away." "And you will take a man with you," said Robert Daventry. Neither he nor Joan had been brought up in cotton-wool; nor did they ever think to cloister Cynthia. She was left her liberty; and so half an hour afterward, with a big straw hat shading her face from the sun, she drove in her cart along the avenue to the railway station. She sent off the messages of thanks and then wrote out the important telegram which was to mark the day for her. She wrote it out without an alteration. For her thoughts had run fastidiously on the wording of it all through breakfast-time. She addressed it to: Captain Rames, R. N., _S.S. Perhaps_, Tilbury Docks, London. And she handed it to the operator with a certain trepidation like one who does some daring and irrevocable deed. The operator, however, was quite unmoved. The important message to which so much consideration had been given, wore to him quite a commonplace look. It amounted, indeed, to no more than this: "Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey, from an unknown friend in South America." Thus, the very words were conventional and the sentiment no great matter to make a fuss about. But this was not Cynthia's point of view.