"Give it to me—his writing is large and legible. I think I can read it. 'My dear mother, the place I told you of in my last letter was given away, so I must go on in the toy-shop till something better turns up. I only get six shillings a week and my tea, and can't quite manage on that.' Then something—something—'pay three and sixpence a week'—something—'bed' —something—something."
"I know, ma'am; he shares a bed with the eldest boy."
"Yes, that's it; and he wants to know if you can help him. 'I don't like to trouble you, mother; but it is hard for a boy to get his living in London.'"
"But I've sent him all my money. I shan't have any till next quarter."
"I'll lend you some, Esther. We can't leave the boy to starve. He can't live on two and sixpence a week."
"You're very good, ma'am; but I don't like to take your money. We shan't be able to get the garden cleared this winter."
"We shall manage somehow, Esther. The garden must wait. The first thing to do is to see that your boy doesn't want for food."
The women resumed their walk up the hill. When they reached the top Mrs.
Barfield said—
"I haven't heard from Mr. Arthur for months. I envy you, Esther, those letters asking for a little money. What's the use of money to us except to give it to our children? Helping others, that is the only happiness."
At the end of the coombe, under the shaws, stood the old red-tiled farmhouse in which Mrs. Barfield had been born. Beyond it, downlands rolled on and on, reaching half-way up the northern sky. Mrs. Barfield was thinking of the days when her husband used to jump off his cob and walk beside her through those gorse patches on his way to the farmhouse. She had come from the farmhouse beneath the shaws to go to live in an Italian house sheltered by a fringe of trees. That was her adventure. She knew it, and she turned from the view of the downs to the view of the sea. The plantations of Woodview touched the horizon, then the line dipped, and between the top branches of a row of elms appeared the roofs of the town. Over a long spider-legged bridge a train wriggled like a snake, the bleak river flowed into the harbour, and the shingle banks saved the low land from inundation. Then the train passed behind the square, dogmatic tower of the village church. Her husband lay beneath the chancel; her father, mother, all her relations, lay in the churchyard. She would go there in a few years…. Her daughter lay far away, far away in Egypt. Upon this downland all her life had been passed, all her life except the few months she had spent by her daughter's bedside in Egypt. She had come from that coombe, from that farmhouse beneath the shaws, and had only crossed the down.