The young man threw back his head and laughed.
“Lord!” he exclaimed, “what an old sport! Yes, I expect I can manage it. Where is the forsaken place?”
A large ordnance-map of Norfolk (which had been captured from a German officer) was produced, and the young man studied it closely.
At three o’clock precisely old Sam, finding himself something of a hero and quite glad to escape from the embarrassment which this position entailed upon him, once more sped skyward in a “dratted airyplane.”
At twenty minutes to five he landed once more among Mr. Hodge’s swedes. The breezy young airman shook hands with him and departed inland. Old Sam sat down and surveyed the familiar field of turnips.
“A noice thing, I must say!” he muttered to himself as he looked along the lines of unthinned turnips. He still had twenty minutes, and so he went slowly along and completed a line which he had begun in the morning. He then deliberately packed up his dinner-things and his tools and started out for home.
As he came round the corner of Stillway’s meadow and the cottage came in view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.
“Well, Uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”
It was then that old Sam really lost his temper.
“Noos!” he said. “Noos! Drat the girl! What noos should there be? Sixty-nine year’ I live in these ’ere parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Hodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these ’ere story-book folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough, ye silly, dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat and a glass o’ beer and a place to rest a’s head o’night without always wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”