“I do not like that Golliwog,” breathed Mrs. Jasher to her host, when Cockatoo was at the sideboard.  “He gives me the creeps.”

“Imagination, my dear lady, pure imagination.  Why should we not have a picturesque animal to wait upon us?”

“He would wait picturesquely enough at a cannibal feast,” suggested Archie, with a laugh.

“Don’t!” murmured Lucy, with a shiver.  “I shall not be able to eat my dinner if you talk so.”

“Odd that Hope should say what he has said,” observed Braddock confidently to the widow.  “Cockatoo comes from a cannibal island, and doubtless has seen the consumption of human flesh.  No, no, my dear lady, do not look so alarmed.  I don’t think he has eaten any, as he was taken to Queensland long before he could participate in such banquets.  He is a very decent animal.”

“A very dangerous one, I fancy,” retorted Mrs. Jasher, who looked pale.

“Only when he loses his temper, and I’m always able to suppress that when it is at its worst.  You are not eating your meat, my dear lady.”

“Can you wonder at it, and you talk of cannibals?”

“Let us change the conversation to cereals,” suggested Hope, whose appetite was of the best—­“wheat, for instance.  In this queer little village I notice the houses are divided by a field of wheat.  It seems wrong somehow for corn to be bunched up with houses.”

“That’s old Farmer Jenkins,” said Lucy vivaciously; “he owns three or four acres near the public-house and will not allow them to be built over, although he has been offered a lot of money.  I noticed myself, Archie, the oddity of finding a cornfield surrounded by cottages.  It’s like Alice in Wonderland.”

“But fancy any one offering money for land here,” observed Hope, toying with his claret glass, which had just been refilled, by the attentive Cockatoo, “at the Back-of-Beyond, as it were.  I shouldn’t care to live here—­the neighborhood is so desolate.”

“All the same you do live here!” interposed Mrs. Jasher smartly, and with a roguish glance at Lucy.

Archie caught the glance and saw the blush on Miss Kendal’s face.

“You have answered your question yourself, Mrs. Jasher,” he—­ said, smiling.  “I have the inducement you hint at to remain here, and certainly, as a landscape painter, I admire the marshes and sunsets.  As an artist and an engaged man I stop in Gartley, otherwise I should clear out.  But I fail to see why a lady of your attractions should—­”

“I may have a sentimental reason also,” interrupted the widow, with a sly glance at the absent-minded Professor, who was drawing hieroglyphics on the table-cloth with a fork; “also, my cottage is cheap and very comfortable.  The late Mr. Jasher did not leave me sufficient money to live in London.  He was a consul in China, you know, and consuls are never very well paid.  I will come in for a large income, however.”