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Bowden nodded. News from the war was now nothing but a reminder of how that fellow Steer had deprived him of Ned’s help and company. The war would be over some day, he supposed, but they didn’t seem to get on with it, gaining ground one day and losing it the next, and all the time passing this law and that law interfering with the land. Didn’t they know the land couldn’t be interfered with—the cuckoos? Steer, of course, was all part of this interference with the land—the fellow grew wheat where anybody could have told him it couldn’t be grown!

The day was hot, the road dusty, and that chap Steer hanging about the market like the colley he was—so that Bowden imbibed freely at ‘The Drake’ before making a start for home.

When he entered his kitchen the newly christened baby was lying in a grocery box, padded with a pillow and shawl, just out of the sunlight in which old Mrs. Bowden sat moving her hands as if weaving a spell. Bowden’s sheepdog had lodged its nose on the edge of the box, and was sniffing as if to ascertain the difference in the baby. In the background the girl Pansy moved on her varying business; she looked strong again, but pale still, and ‘daverdy,’ Bowden thought. He stood beside the box contemplating the ‘monstrous’ baby. It wasn’t like Ned, nor anything, so far as he could see. It opened its large grey eyes while he stood there. That colley Steer would never have a grandchild, not even one born like this! The thought pleased him. He clucked to the baby with his tongue, and his sheepdog jealously thrust its head, with mass of brushed-back snowy hair, under his hand.