Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/43

 lord a sport, and the lord found the labourer a man just like himself. Oh, it's going to be what a little cockney in my section would have called 'an 'ades of a beano.'"

Beresford shovelled some more coal on the fire. He seemed unable to get the chill out of his limbs.

"And you," she asked, "are you tramping for long?"

"For ever I hope."

"For ever! That's rather a long time, isn't it?" she questioned.

Beresford then told her something of his determination to cut adrift from town life and its drudgery, and to see what the open road had to offer. He told her of the protests of his relatives; of the general conviction that he had become mentally unhinged, probably due to shell-shock. How every one had endeavoured to dissuade him from the folly upon which he was about to embark. He told her that in the disposal of his effects he felt rather like a schoolboy destroying his kit.

"But your books?" she said. "What did you do with them?"

"Ah! there you've put your finger on the weak spot," laughed Beresford. "I had meant to give away a few and sell the rest; but somehow I couldn't do it, so I had them done up in cases and stored away. I paid two years' storage in advance."

She nodded approval and understanding.

"You will see that I'm really a very weak character after all."