"Eh, but they're like mother and father to you, if you've been bred to em," answered Ruth. "I just couldn't a-bear to be parted from them nohows. They're Sussex--them and the sea. Sussex by the sea, my Miss Caryll used to call it." They travelled up the hill; and the girl feasted her eyes on the green of Saffrons Croft. "I allow the brown-birds holloa in them old ellums, dawn and dusk," she murmured, talking more to herself than to her companion. "That's what I misses by the sea more'n all--the song o birds. There's no loo like for em--only the anonymous bushes. Reck'n that's where it is. They like the loo'th, doos birds. But times I see a old jack-yearn flappin along over the Levels like he'd all the time before him. And the wheat-ears come from acrarst the sea and show the white of their tails that carmical about Cuckoo-fair. Hap it'll be their first landing-place. They must be tired. But there's not nigh the numbers there was one time o day. When dad was a lad there was I dunna many all along the Downs from Rottingdean to Friston." The bus stopped, as always, at the _Star_. Ernie, who felt the spirit of the show-man strong within him, pointed out the Manor-house with a certain proprietary air. "That's where Mr. Trupp lives," he explained. "They come from all over the world to see him. He's our doctor. Has been this thirty year. Dad was one of the first in Old Town to have him. Give him his start, as you might say." "He's a nice gentleman surely," said Ruth. "Do you know him then?" asked Ernie, a thought jealously. "I've knaw'd him all my life," answered the other. "He attends the Squire and family. He looked after my Miss Caryll till she died; and then me when I took bad after her death. Eh, but he was a kind gentleman." "He brought me into the world," said Ernie with an air of finality, the desire to swagger still strong upon him. "He took the inside out of the Tsar of Dobrudja and he brought me into the world. That's what Mr. Trupp done." She turned a deep brown eye on him. "He done well," she said quietly. Then they both laughed. At Billing's Corner he helped her off the bus and on to the four-horse char-a-banc waiting outside the _Billing Arms_. "Last char-a-banc home," said Ernie authoritatively. "Half after nine or so. I'll look out." He stood beneath her in the dust. With her jet-black hair, her colouring of a ripe peach, and those soft swarthy eyes that streamed down upon him, she perched above him, stately, mocking, mysterious. He could not make her out. She was at once so simple and so elusive in her royal way. She teased, startled, and exalted him; she calmed and maddened him. "Thank you, Mr. Caspar," came the quiet voice from on high. "Call me, Ernie," he ordered, this strange passion to domineer still overmastering him. She gazed at him with those quiet ironical eyes of hers. Then the char-a-banc moved on. CHAPTER XXXII ON THE HILL