The sun dipped into the sea as they turned with a noise of grinding
wheels into the village street. The news of Goosey Gander's victory had
preceded them and they drove slowly through little crowds of cheering
children, between old flint cottages with tiled roofs, and gardens white
with arabis and overspread with fig-trees.

As they turned a corner, Putnam's lay before them, a Queen Anne
manor-house, homely, solid, snug, with low blue parapeted roof, standing
a little back from the road, and buttressed by barns and
stable-buildings.

Directly they came in sight of the windows of the farm the old man took
his hat off his shining head, put it on the end of his whip, and began
to twiddle it.

The signal was instantly answered.

A handkerchief was waved at a lower window.

"There's Mar!" Mat said comfortably, easing into a walk. "One thing, she
ain't dead. _That's_ a little bit o' better."

He gave his plump body a half-turn and began again to whimper over his
shoulder to the occupant of the back seat.

"You wouldn't get your old dad into trouble, would you then, Boy?--not
by tellin' Mar I done a lot o' things I never dreamed o' doin'. If you
was to say I betted now you'd say what wasn't true, wouldn't you?--and
you've often told me what come to Annie Nyas and Sophia in the Book,
haven't you? A lesson to us all that was--to be took to 'eart, as the