_September 5th_.
Four days later we left the Grange and came to our new home, a furnished
house four miles away. It is a big, square, prosaic-looking building,
but comfortable, with a nice big garden, so we are fortunate to have
found such a place in the neighbourhood. We told each other gushingly
how fortunate we had been, every time that we discovered anything that
we hated more than usual, and were obtrusively gay all that first horrid
evening.

Vere's two rooms had been made home-like and pretty with treasures saved
from the Moat, and new curtains and cushions and odds and ends like
that; but we left the other rooms as they were, and pretended that we
liked sitting on crimson satin chairs with gold legs. Father is lost
without his nice gunny, sporty sanctum. Mother looks pathetically out
of place in the bald, ugly rooms, and I feel a pelican in the wilderness
without my belongings but when you have come through great big troubles
you are ashamed to fuss over little things like these.

Also, to tell the truth, we are thankful to be together in a place of
our own again. Mrs Greaves and Rachel had been sweet to us, but they
had one invalid on their hands already, and we could not help feeling
that we gave a great deal of trouble. They said they were sorry to lose
us, and that we had been an interest in their quiet lives, and I do
think that was true. Vere, with her beauty and her tragedy, her lovely
clothes and dainty ways, was as good as a three-volume novel to people
who wear blue serge the whole year round, do their hair neatly in knobs
like walnuts, and never indulge in anything more exciting than a garden
party. Then there was the romantic figure of poor Jim Carstairs
hovering in the background, ready at any moment to do desperate deeds,
if thereby he could win a smile of approval, so different from that
other complacent lover, who was "content to wait" and never knew the
semblance of a qualm! I used to watch Rachel watch Jim, and thought
somehow that she felt the difference, and was not so serene as she had
been when I first knew her. Her face looked sad sometimes, but not for
long, for she had so little time to think of herself. I agree with Will
that she is the best woman in the world, and the sweetest and most
unselfish.

The house where Will lives is nearer "The Clift" than the old home, and
the two men come over often to see us. They had reconnoitred the
grounds before we arrived, an