can never be "home."

Farms that were practically taken on a hundred and twenty, or fifty, or
perhaps two hundred years' leases were "homes." Consequently they had
damask roses, bees, and birds about them.

There had been daffodils in that spot at least a century, opening every
March to the dry winds that shrivel up the brown dead leaves of winter,
and carry them out from the bushes under the trees, sending them across
the meadow--fleeing like a routed army before the bayonets of the East.
Every spring for a century at least the daffodils had bloomed there.

Amaryllis did not stay to think of the century, but ran round the corner
of the house, and came face to face with the east wind, which took her
with such force as to momentarily stay her progress. Her skirts were
blown out horizontally, her ankles were exposed, and the front line of
her shape (beginning to bud like spring) was sketched against the red
brick wall. She laughed, but the strong gale filled her throat as if a
hand had been thrust down it; the wind got its edge like a knife under
her eyelids, between them and the eyeballs, and seemed as if it would
scoop them out; her eyes were wet with involuntary tears; her lips dried
up and parched in a moment. The wind went through her thick stockings as
if the wool was nothing. She lifted her hand to defend her eyes, and the
skin of her arm became "goosey" directly. Had she worn hat or bonnet it
would have flown. Stooping forwards, she pushed step by step, and
gradually reached the shelter of the high garden wall; there she could
stand upright, and breathe again.

Her lips, which had been whitened by the keen blast, as if a storm of
ice particles had been driven against them, now resumed their scarlet,
but her ears were full of dust and reddened, and her curly dark hair was
dry and rough and without gloss. Each separate hair separated itself
from the next, and would not lie smooth--the natural unctuous essence
which usually caused them to adhere was dried up.

The wind had blown thus round that corner every March for a century, and
in no degree abated its bitter force because a beautiful human child,
full of the happiness of a flower, came carelessly into its power.
Nothing ever shows the least consideration for human creatures.

The moss on the ridge of the wall under which she stood to breathe
looked shrivelled and thin, the green tint dried out of it. A sparrow
with a straw tried hard to reach the eaves of t