aged house she was fresh and clean,
homelier than the frigid servants at Halberton House, happier--that was
the only word--than Gabrielle's own servants at Lapton. Yes,
happier----

When she came downstairs Arthur was waiting for her.

"I thought you were never coming," he said. Their time was short and
he was anxious to show her all the altars of his childhood. They met
Mrs. Payne in the hall. She smiled at them with encouragement, for it
was part of her settled plan to let them have their own way and so
tempt them into a naturalness that might betray them. She, too, had
the feeling that she was fighting against time.

Arthur was full of enthusiasms. They went together to the stables,
where he introduced her to Hollis, the coachman standing in his
shirtsleeves in a saddle-room that smelt of harness-polish. He stood
in front of a cracked mirror brushing his hair, hissing softly, as
though he were grooming a horse, and round his waist was a red-striped
belt of the webbing out of which a horse's belly-band is made.

"Well, Mr. Arthur, you're looking up finely, sir," he said, touching
his forelock. Even the stables exhaled the same atmosphere of pleasant
leisure as the house.

"I want you to get a side-saddle ready for Brunette to-morrow, Hollis,"
said Arthur. "Mrs. Considine and I are going for a ride over the hill."

At the end of the stables they encountered a pair of golden retrievers.
For a moment they stared at Arthur, and then, suddenly recognising him,
made for him together, jumping up with their paws on his shoulders and
licking him with their pale tongues.

"What beauties," Gabrielle cried.

"Yes, they come from Banbury," he said. "I'll get you a pup next term
if you'd like one."

Their evening was crowded with such small wonders. "I can't show you
half the things I want to," he said. "It's ridiculous that you should
only be here for three days." He would have gone on for ever, and she
had to warn him when the clock in the stables struck seven that they
had only just time to dress for dinner. On the way upstairs he showed
her his new study, with the bookshelves that he had bought in the last
holidays.

"I do all my writing here," he said, and then suddenly but shyly
emboldened: "it was here that I wrote to you when I sent you the
cowslips."

He had never dared to mention the incident before.

"You didn't answer me," he went on. "Why didn't you answer me? I wish
you'd tell me."

"