He threw his cap down on the grass and accepted a sandwich which she held out to him.

“Why, you’ve got grey hairs!” she cried. “You hadn’t one when you came to me a year ago.”

“Dorset air,” he remarked grimly.

“And you’ve got lines there; and your mouth is different; and you’re a lot thinner!”

“Hard work!” he threw out. “I’ve done Urquhart’s book for him though⁠ ⁠… and I’ve been paid for it.”

She turned round fully towards him now and laid both book and sandwiches on the ground. He noted that the volume was Palgrave’s Golden Treasury . He also noted an empty medicine-bottle beside her, blurred with the whiteness of milk, upon whose orifice three black flies had settled.