“No,” he said awkwardly, “I hadn’t anything else. It was good of you to trouble to come though. Go and get some new boots and a good supper. It’s bad going on the roads in autumn. I know, I’ve done it.”
She gasped at him bewildered, her hand still open.
“Yer a gentleman, yer are,”—her tone hesitated as it were between the statement of a plain fact and doubt of his last words.
“Winchester is three miles on. You can get decent lodgings out by the Station Road to the left as you go under the arch. Good-bye.” He raised his hat again and turned away. The woman looked after him, gave a prolonged sniff and limped back up the hill.
Max looked at Christopher out of the corner of his eye, a little doubtfully. He had not come near, fastidiousness outweighing curiosity. 162
“What did she want—and why did you take your hat off?”
Christopher grew hot again.
“Oh, she’s a woman, and my mother and I tramped, you know.”
Max did not know, and intimated that Christopher was talking rot.
Christopher decapitated a thistle and explained briefly, “Cæsar adopted me straight out of a workhouse. My mother and I were tramping from London to Southampton, and she got ill at Whitmansworth, the other side of Winchester, and died there. The Union kept me till Mr. Aston took me away. I thought everyone knew.”