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ing up to the senior boys. I can’t help it—I feel older than the seniors. When you’ve worked with men for five years you’re more like an undersized man than a boy. . . . Well, I must work here, and take what I’m being given; it’s good—it is good, and I’ll never lose the books again, and I don’t think of her (much) when I’m working. . . . Only I wish she wouldn’t be so tantalising. If I were a man I could hit back, and I’m afraid I would, but I can’t do anything as things are. When she kisses me in the dark it’s all right—I feel like a soft baby, and it is a dream, and she’s all the mothers that ever were. But when she touches my cheek—so lightly—all the blood in my body races up to meet her fingers . . . et, mon Dieu! n’est ce pas que je suis Français? . . . Why does it feel so different? It is the silliest thing I ever knew.”

He frowned, and settled himself to write to Robertson. He explained briefly how it happened that he was staying with the Straines for so long, but he found it impossible to write much of his reasons for leaving Paranui.

“I shall come back to N.Z. sometime and then perhaps I shall tell you more about why I left, it is too new now. I am glad Baldwin has gone, I hated him worse than the others did, but they all hated him, there would have been a row at Paranui some day; I know he was a good manager, but he nagged more than he was worth. There nearly was a row the night I left, and probably if I had been a few years older there would have been one. It feels a very long time since I have seen you, supposing you had such a thing as a photograph you might send me one, I would rather have it than most things.”

Alison was rather abstracted at the Wallaces’. She could not forget the brown face with the imploring eyes, the boyish voice, a little gruff with earnestness as he begged