He laughed aloud as he remembered the day when he had decked Amomma's horns with the ham-frills, and Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him.

How long those four years seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with every hour of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the beach, sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the mud-flats, and Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying before the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to Mrs.Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and her teeth firm-set; and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy.

The pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest.
Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind as it was foreign to his experiences.

It never occurred to him that there might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the forenoon.
'There's a good working light now,' he said, watching his shadow placidly.

'Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this.