"No--yours beginned fifty year ago by the look of you. But milk will help you. You're just the thin, poor-fed fashion of man as ought to drink it. My Daniel's different. With his huge thews he must have red meat--like a dear old tiger. Milk's no use to him." "By Jove--d'you think I look fifty, Mrs. Brendon?" he asked. "To my eye, I should guess you wasn't much under. Beg pardon, I'm sure, if you be." "I'm thirty-six," he said. "My stars! Then you ought to take more care of yourself." "I sleep badly." "You think too much belike?" "Yes--there's a lot to think about." "You did ought to put a bit of wool round your neck when you come out in the morning air, perhaps," she suggested; but he laughed at this. "Good gracious! I'm not made of sugar. I look a giant of strength beside town folk. 'Tis only in your eye that all of us seem weaklings beside Brendon. To tell you the truth, I'm rather a fool about my health. I said just now I had so much to think about: don't you believe it! I've got nothing to think about--hardly more than the cows. Now, I mustn't waste any more of your time." He sauntered on towards the Moor. Daniel Brendon was standing at his entrance as Woodrow approached, and he touched his hat and said-- "Morning, sir!" "Morning, Dan," the master answered and passed on. Sarah Jane took her milk-pails to the dairy, and then went home to breakfast. She chattered to her husband, narrated her morning's experience, and explained at length her theories of Hilary Woodrow. "To think as he be no more than six-and-thirty!" she said. "How d'you know that?" "He told me. I forget how it went, but I'd just said I reckoned he was fifty, and he seemed rather troubled." "Fancy your speaking like that!" "He don't look much less, all the same. And I gave him a bit of advice too." "Advise him! Nought stops you," Daniel said with his mouth full. "Why should it? After you've been married a month--there 'tis--you've got more wisdom and understanding of menfolk than a century of maiden life could bring to 'e. I feel like a mother to these here helpless men a'ready." "Never was such a large-hearted female as you, Sarah Jane." "What that man wants is a wife. I couldn't have read him any more than you could a bit ago; now 'tis as plain to my understanding as this cup of tea. A wisht, hangdog, sorrowful face to my eye; yet very good-looking in his thin way. But hungry--awful hungry." "As to women, he's had enough of them. One treated him shameful. But 'tisn't them: 'tis his terrible vain ideas about religion makes him fretful, I reckon. Well he may be hungry!" "Don't you believe that," she answered. "Church-going don't put fat on the bones, whatever else it may do. He should have a female after him, to fuss a bit, and coddle him, and see he lets his proper food down. He wants somebody to listen to his talk--somebody to sharpen his wits on."