"'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?