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A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple lawns, let them out before tea-time into the unkempt south side of their land.

“I want your hand, please,” said Sophie as soon as they were safe among the beech boles and the lawless hollies. “D’you remember the old maid in ‘Providence and the Guitar’ who heard the Commissary swear, and hardly reckoned herself a maiden lady afterward? Because I’m a relative of hers. Lady Conant is–“

“Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?” he interrupted.

“I didn’t ask. I’m going to write to Aunt Sydney about it first. Oh, Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought some land from some Lashmars a few years ago. I found it was at the beginning of last century.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Really, how interesting!’ Like that. I’m not going to push myself forward. I’ve been hearing about Mr. Sangres’s efforts in that direction. And you? I couldn’t see you behind the flowers. Was it very deep water, dear?”

George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures.

“Oh no–dead easy,” he answered. “I’ve bought Friars Pardon to prevent Sir Walter’s birds straying.”

A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded almost under their feet. Sophie jumped.

“That’s one of ’em,” said George calmly.

“Well, your nerves are better, at any rate,” said she. “Did you tell ’em you’d bought the thing to play with?”

“No. That was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad break–I think. I said I couldn’t see why hiring land to men to farm wasn’t as much a business proposition as anything else.”

“And what did they say?”

“They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They don’t waste their smiles. D’you see that track by Gale Anstey?”

They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed slowly along the paths that connected farm to farm.

“I’ve never seen so many on our land before,” said Sophie. “Why is it?”

“To show us we mustn’t shut up their rights of way.”

“Those cow-tracks we’ve been using cross lots?” said Sophie forcibly.

“Yes. Any one of ’em would cost us two thousand pounds each in legal expenses to close.”

“But we don’t want to,” she said.

“The whole community would fight if we did.”

“But it’s our land. We can do what we like.”

“It’s not our land. We’ve only paid for it. We belong to it, and it belongs to the people–our people they call ’em. I’ve been to lunch with the English too.”

They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the next–flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue, spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but smiling covertly.

“We shall make some bad breaks,” he said at last.

“Together, though. You won’t let anyone else in, will you?”

“Except the contractors. This syndicate handles, this proposition by its little lone.”

“But you might feel the want of some one,” she insisted.

“I shall–but it will be you. It’s business, Sophie, but it’s going to be good fun.”

“Please God,” she answered flushing, and cried to herself as they went back to tea. “It’s worth it. Oh, it’s worth it.”

The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the most varied and searching, but all done English fashion, without friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching out on every side.

“I ain’t sayin’ anything against Londoners,” said Cloke, self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer, head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of woods and forests; “but your own people won’t go about to make more than a fair profit out of you.”