They were walking on the moor¹. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Betty was on the way to one of her numerous pensioners², a bed-ridden old labourer who lived in what had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge of a wood, with a granddaughter to keep house for him, a handsome, wild-looking girl of about sixteen.

 

“What are you going to do when you leave school?” Betty asked suddenly. Since the discovery that she was two years older than Anthony she had adopted towards him a motherly attitude. She had laid it aside while she was learning to ride the bicycle. Anthony’s early mechanical training had given him a general knowledge of adjustments and repairs. He had assumed the position of instructor³, and had spoken in tones of authority. Feeling her safety dependent upon his strength and agility⁵, compelled so often to call to him for help, to cling to him for support, she had been docile⁶ and apologetic. But the interlude ended, she had resumed her airs of superiority.

 

“Oughtn’t you to be thinking about it?” she added.

 

 

 

“I have been thinking about it,” he explained. “My difficulty is that I’ve no one to advise me, not now Sir William Coomber’s dead.”

 

“Why don’t you have a talk with father?” she suggested.

 

“I did think of that too,” he said with a laugh. “But it seems so cheeky.”

 

“How would you like to go into his office?” she asked after a silence.

 

“Do you think he would?” he answered eagerly.

 

“I’ll sound him about it,” she said.

 

They had reached the path leading to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Anthony had vaulted⁷ over the stile. He had turned and was facing her.

 

“You are a brick,” he said.

 

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