She dropped her eyelids, and he saw the length and curl of her lashes. "You are strong," she said, with a dainty irony he found as delightful as it was surprising. "I allow you'll be purty nigh half as strong as I be." He pointed an accusing finger at her. "You're Sussex!" he cried, falling into the old broad speech in his turn. "I'd knaw ye anywheres." Her whole face gladdened slowly as she heard the familiar accent. "Never!" she said, still faintly ironical, and added more sedately. "I was bred and born in Sussex, and never been outside it." "And never mean to be," chaffed Ernie. "That's your style. I knaw ye." "I was borrn in the Brooks at Aldwoldston," she continued, pronouncing the word Auston. "Along under the church by the White Bridge across Parson's Tye. Dad was Squire Caryll's keeper till he was ate up with the rheumatism." Her speech broadened even as she spoke, deliberately, he thought, to meet his own. He followed suit. The pair began to ca-a-a away at each other like a couple of old rooks in an elm in May. "What might be your name then?" "Ruth Boam, I believe." Ernie nodded sagaciously. "'Twould be surely. Boam or Burgess or Ticehurst or Woolgar. Something with a bit o Saxon in it, as dad says." He added hopefully: "I'm Sussex too. I was dragged up in Old Town agin the Rectory there," jerking his head. "Cerdainly I was." She regarded him mischievously. "I knew you was no'hun of a foreigner then," she told him. Ernie feigned surprise. "How did you knaw that then?" She chuckled like a cuckoo. "Hap I aren't the only one," she answered. Then she was gone; and it struck him suddenly that this grave and stately damsel had been chaffing him. Ernie stood a moment amazed. Then he nodded his head. Suddenly he seemed to have crossed a border-line into a new country. Behind him was the stale old past, with its failures, its purposelessness, its dreary hag-tracks; before him was adventure, the New world--and what? He wasn't sure. But there it was beckoning him and he should follow, true child of Romance that he was. And it was time he moved on. He had been a year now at the Hotel and was, as always, tending to grow slack. Salvation Joe was watching him, waiting his chance, and Ernie knew it. Now a change stole over him. A nucleus, small at first, but always growing, round which the dissipated forces of his spirit could rally, had been forming in his heart, unknown to him, ever since Ruth's advent to the Third Floor. He was becoming firm of purpose, gathering himself, making good. His eyes, his face, his gait, testified to the change. Mr. Trupp, the observant, remarked on it to Mr. Pigott. "He's growing," he said. "The right way, let's hope," answered the other. "That place you sent him to is a queer kind of forcing house." "He wants forcing," said Mr. Trupp. "We all do." "Bah!" growled Mr. Pigott. "You and your Lash." CHAPTER XXIX THE MAN OF AFFAIRS