was struck by the odd feature of the two large windows exactly
opposite each other, so that a spectator on either side of the house
might look right through it.

"Seems like being in the street. However, if there's nobody to look at
you, I suppose it don't matter."

Then he laughed, for just as he led his motor cycle into the yard, and
passed the sitting-room window, he was struck by the appearance of two
large sheep, who seemed to be actually in the sitting-room, at its
farther end. They were standing, he presently perceived, upon the steep
down beyond the house, on the slope of which the farm was built; which on
the southern side of the farm quadrangle came right up to the house wall.
At the same moment he saw a woman inside get up and shoo them from the
open window, so that they ran away.

But when Jenny Harberton had admitted him, and he was waiting in the
sitting-room, from which the woman he had seen had disappeared, he was in
the mood to admire everything. How nice the two women had made it! His
own rough life, both before and since the war, had only increased a
natural instinct for order and seemliness. The pretty blue paper, the
fresh drugget, the photographs on the wall, the flowers, and the delicate
neatness of everything delighted him. He went round looking at the
pictures and the few books, perfectly conscious that everything which he
saw had a more than common interest for him. The room seemed to be
telling a story--opening points of view.

"Ah!"

He paused, a broad smile overspreading his bronzed face.

For he had perceived a popular History of the War lying open and face
downwards on the table, one that he had recommended to the mistress of
the farm. So she had followed his advice. It pleased him particularly! He
had gathered that she was never a great reader; still, she was an
educated woman, she ought to know something of what her country had done.

And there was actually a piano! He wondered whether she played, or her
friend.

Meanwhile Rachel was changing her dress upstairs--rather deliberately.
She did not want to look too glad to see her visitor, to flatter him by
too much hurry. When he arrived she had just come in from the fields
where she had been at the threshing machine all day. It had covered her
with dirt and chaff; and the process of changing was only half through
when she heard the rattle of Ellesborough's cycle outside. She stood now
before the glass, a radiant daughter of air an