“The cottage I’m thinking of stands by itself in a little orchard.”
“And what about the Suffrage?” he asked, attempting sarcasm.
“Oh, there are other things in the world besides the Suffrage,” she replied, in an off-hand manner which was slightly mysterious.
Ralph fell silent. It annoyed him that she should have plans of which he knew nothing; but he felt that he had no right to press her further. His mind settled upon the idea of life in a country cottage. Conceivably, for he could not examine into it now, here lay a tremendous possibility; a solution of many problems. He struck his stick upon the earth, and stared through the dusk at the shape of the country.
“D’you know the points of the compass?” he asked.
“Well, of course,” said Mary. “What d’you take me for?—a Cockney like you?” She then told him exactly where the north lay, and where the south.
“It’s my native land, this,” she said. “I could smell my way about it blindfold.”
As if to prove this boast, she walked a little quicker, so that Ralph found it difficult to keep pace with her. At the same time, he felt drawn to her as he had never been before; partly, no doubt, because she was more independent of him than in London, and seemed to be attached firmly to a world where he had no place at all. Now the dusk had fallen to such an extent that he had to follow her implicitly, and even lean his hand on her shoulder when they jumped a bank into a very narrow lane. And he felt curiously shy of her when she began to shout through her hands at a spot of light which swung upon the mist in a neighbouring field. He shouted, too, and the light stood still.
“That’s Christopher, come in already, and gone to feed his chickens,” she said.
