Then, and only then, the four corners of the parish came together apace. The old bourne disappeared, the source of it in the Moot under the church-crowned Kneb now no more than a stagnant pond. And by the time of our story a city of tens of thousands of inhabitants had risen where men, still middle-aged, could recall meadows that swept down to the sea, the voice of the corn-crake harsh everywhere as they sauntered down Water Lane of evenings after church, and the last fight of the "gentlemen" and the Revenue Officers that took place on a desolate strip of shore to the sound of calling sea-birds, on the site of what is now the Cecil Hotel. CHAPTER IX THE TWO BOYS Next time Mr. Trupp called at 60 Rectory Walk, he marked that the familiar chocolate notice in the upper window had gone. He chaffed Mrs. Caspar in his grim way. "No more rooms to let, I see," he said. "No," the woman answered. "No more lies to have to tell just at present." She was in one of her tartest moods; and when he congratulated her on being through her troubles, she answered, "Some of em. Plenty more to follow. There'll be enough money for Ned and me and the boys. That's one thing." "And a big thing too," said Mr. Trupp. "The biggest," admitted the woman surlily. "Speaking worldly-wise, I don't say nay to that." After the birth of her second son, Mr. Trupp had told her that she would have no more children and she was glad: for her hands were going to be full enough throughout her life; so much the shrewd woman saw clearly. There was her husband; and there was her eldest son, Ernie, who was his father over again. He had his father's face, his father's charm, his father's soft and generous heart; and, unless she was mistaken, other qualities of his father that were by no means so desirable. And the curious thing was that the characteristics which in her husband Anne Caspar secretly admired, only exasperated her in Ernie. Alf, the second son, whatever his faults, certainly did not trace them to his dad. He was as much his mother's child as Ernie was his father's. And whether for that reason or because for years she had to wrestle for his miserable little life with the Angel of Death, his mother loved him with the fierce, protecting passion of an animal. "Nobody but his mother could have saved him," Mr. Trupp told his wife. While Mrs. Caspar said to the same lady, "But for Mr. Trupp he wouldn't be here."