Once, when he was telling her of a journey he had once made to the hills with a surveying party in some humble capacity, he said: “I wish you could have seen the flowers. Never saw anything like it, never in my life! Great sheets of scarlet as close-packed as they grasses on the green, and primulas and lilies and things such as you only see here in a hothouse, and, rising right out of ‘em, great mountains all covered with snow. Ah! ‘twas a sight—a sight! My mate says to me this mornin’ when we found it was rainin’ and his ague shakin’ him again, ‘Oh Ben,’ he says, ‘I do wish we were back in India with a bit of hot sun;’ and I said to him, ‘’Tain’t no good wishin’, Tom. We’ve had our day and that day’s over. We shan’t see India no more.’”

It was strange, thought Laura, that other pensioners she knew who had served in India had left that land with no regrets and very few memories. If asked about their adventures, they would say: “The places have got funny names and it’s very hot out there. In the Bay of Biscay on the way out every man jack of us was seasick.” Most of them were short-service men, and they had returned cheerfully to the plough-tail. They appeared to be happier than Ben, but Laura liked him best.

One day a man known as “Long Bob,” a lock-keeper on the canal, came in with a small package which he wished to send by registered post. It was roughly done up in soiled brown paper, and the string, although much knotted, was minus the wax seals required by the regulations. When Laura offered him the loan of the office sealing-wax, he asked her to seal and make tidy the package for him, saying that his fingers were all thumbs and he hadn’t got no ‘ooman now to do such fiddling little jobs for him. “But maybe,” he added, “before you start on it, you’d like to have a look at that within.”