"Oh, didn't I explain? I'm on a walking tour."
"What on earth are you doing going for a walking tour in March with a cold in your head?"
"I didn't start with the cold. It came. It's my job."
"The cold?" Mary was completely mystified.
"No. The tour. The cold's my necessary infirmity. All great men have them. Look at Julius Caesar with his epilepsy and Pepys with his stone—I beg your pardon. That's not quite polite, is it? Look at St. Paul then, and the thorn in his flesh, and me with my colds."
"But how are walking tours your job?" Mary clung resolutely to the point to save herself from complete insanity.
"Because I'm a sort of a journalist on a holiday. I got headaches in Manchester, reporting and writing silly articles and things in the very plainest street you ever saw, so my chief, who is a very decent fellow, suggested that I should walk about in Yorkshire a bit, collecting materials about the life of the agricultural labourer, and lots of juicy statistics about capitalist farmers that will make them sit up and see the iniquity of their ways. Do you know anything about them?"
"Capitalist farmers?"
A little while ago Mary thought she knew very little. Mr. David Rossitur had enlightened her. She added smilingly, "I think I know a good deal. You see, I am one."
The stranger threw back his head with a laugh. It was that laugh which betrayed at once both his youth and his sanity. Nothing so gallant and infectious could have come from a diseased mind. His laugh seemed to shake the years from Mary and set her again in the company of youth.