The Woodlanders

ry had also undergone their little exp

wondering in what relation he stood towards her. Winterborne himself was unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of having her in charge,

rted, through not having understood till they were about to start that Giles was to be

ou, now they have been moved bodily from the hollo

e should not have seen any difference

nd them all” (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps

but looking at

pple-trees! You know bitter-swe

otten, and it is getting

formerly moved Grace’s mind had quite died away from her. He wondered whether the

ng girls, gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls — and this was a fact which Grace Melbury’s delicate femininity could not

ten think of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked

child’s

id Giles,

ately. That gruff manner of his in making inqui

n, Miss Melbury; your father

and I am g

arker, and I said — I forget the exact words — but I put my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up di

that he mentioned the circumstances. “But, goodn

on’t do! Short frocks, indeed!

e polite at all costs. It might possibly be true, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she was virtua

, his eyes lingering far ahead upon a d

er pitchers, and consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in general, and not only for saving

all my

thin the four seas, so entirely absent from that description was everything specially appertaining to her own existence

ersation away from her and

mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew we

they drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for so

had not taken it into account. On exam

roll, and seemed to feel more nearly

mind; and rising to emulation at what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had br

up with the coachman,” said h

ome to see me this very evening. How

w. It is ver

e timber-merchant’s. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance over the polished leaves of laurel. The interior of t

place for a moment before

rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys alo

iling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their prese

hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace’s reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking her indoors, quite forgot the presence of Giles without, as did also Grace herself.

so as to make them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through

ly tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved in the jambs —

d it was enough for today that he had brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that

ded guesses as to what Grace was saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, “nothing about me!” He looked also in the other direction, and saw against the

forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust Giles’s image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain. Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond’s agent that morning, at which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now that the date had come for fe

in her wood, and fix the price o’t, and settle the matter. But, name it all! I wouldn’t do such a thing. However, it may be usefu

ut her dislike of Hintock, that makes her s

aces of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness

sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops against the sky on the n

light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at length shone blue as sa

where, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct resul

emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her father bolting the doors. Then the stairs

m, and lifting the latch, said, “I am not

r the bedclothes. Grammer set down her candlestick, an

t light that is I see on t

ctor’s. He’s often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you don’t

that she had no

crub sometimes, which your father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a bachelor-man, he’v

dee

es’s practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor’s ends on the south, and little Jimmy Green’s on the east, and somebody else’s to the west. Then I took a pair o

hy

ce is often a very good one, I don’t seem to get many patients. And there’s no society at all; and I’m pretty near melancholy mad,’ he said, with a great yawn.

igher things, do you thin

then they’d see how clever they were at five-and-twenty! And yet he’s a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest of rozums. ‘Ah, Grammer,’ he said, at another time, ‘let me tell you that Everything is Nothing. There’s only M

on go away,

mmer hesitated. At last she went on: “Don’t tell you

the requi

uying me; so he won’

g you!

, hee! — after he’d flattered me a bit like that, he said he’d give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I’d no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fel

h, Grammer, how can you think to

miss. But you needn’t mind. Lord — hee, hee! — I

ou will,

ning fancy to play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nook

ght intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till her e