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Henniker. If I tossed with a pie man I’d be the winner. You know what was done, don’t you? There was the pie man with his tray of pies. You tossed your penny.
    “Heads,” he’d say, for the pie man always called heads. And sure enough if it was old Ben’s penny, it would come up tails. So I kept the penny and had the pie. Other people-they’d lose every time. Never me. A proper gambler I was then and have been ever since. I found selling things was the answer. You find something people want and they can’t do without and you bring it out much better and, if you can, cheaper than the next man. You get the idea? Even when I was only fourteen I knew how best to sell things. I knew where to get the cheapest and give the best value -sheeps’ trotters, pigs’ trotters, whelks, sherbet, ginger beer and lemonade. I had a coffee stall once, and when I got the idea of making gingerbread it seemed I was set fair to make my fortune. I hit on the idea of making it in fancy shapes-horses, dogs, harps, girls, boys . the Queen herself with her crown on her head. My mother made ‘em and I sold ‘em. It got so big we had a little shop right there on the Ratcliffe Highway, and a fine
    shop it was. The business grew and we were more comfortably off. Then one day my mother died. Right as rain one day and gone the next She just dropped dead on the floor when she was making her gingerbread fancies. “
    “What did you do then?”
    “I got me a lady friend. She hadn’t got the touch, though. Pretty as paint but a fiery temper, and she couldn’t make the shapes and the cake wasn’t right either. Business fell off and she left me. I was seventeen years old then, and I took a job in a gentleman’s home looking after the horses. One day they went visiting friends in the country. It was my job to ride there at the back of the carriage, and when we stopped I’d jump out and open the door and see the ladies didn’t muddy their skirts. Oh, I was very handsome in those days. You should have seen my livery. Dark blue with silver braid. All the girls would look twice at me, I can tell you. Well, one day we went out visiting in the country, and where do you think we came to-the little village of Hartingmond. And the house we called on was named Oakland Hall.”
    “You were calling on the dave rings!8 .
    “Quite right, but calling in a humble capacity, you might say. I’d never seen a house like that. I thought it was just about the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. I went round to the stables with the coachman, and we looked after the horses and then got ourselves refreshed while we talked to the stable men of Oakland Hall, and they were very superior, I can tell you.”
    “How interesting!” I cried. That must have been years ago. “
    “Long before you were born. Miss Jessie. When I was seventeen or eighteen and that’s a good many years ago. How old do you think I am ” Older than Xavier . lots older, but somehow you seem younger. “
    The answer seemed to please him. Tou’re just as old as you feel.
    That’s the answer. Ifs not how many years you’ve lived, ifs how they’ve left you. Now I reckon I’ve lived mine pretty well. It was more than forty years ago that I first set eyes on this place, and do you know, I never forgot it. I remember standing there in those stables and feeling the age of it. That’s what I liked-all those stone walls and the feeling that people had been living there hundreds of years, and I said to myself:
    One of these days I’m going to have a house like Oakland^ Hall and no one’s going to stop me. In six months’ time I was on my way to Australia. 2 To look for opals,” I cried.
    “No. I hadn’t thought of opals then. I was after what every.
     
    one else was after-gold. I said to myself: I’ll find gold and I won’t rest until I we made my little pile and when I’ve got it I’ll come home and buy myself such a house. And that’s why I went to Australia.
    What a journey! I worked