Anne stared at him.
"Has he said anything to you?" she asked at last in the voice that grew always more grumbling and ungracious with the years.
"Not yet," her husband answered.
"Well, it's about time," Anne grumbled. "Only I wish I'd had the choosing of her."
"Ernie'll choose all right," Edward answered in the peculiar crisp way he sometimes now adopted. "You needn't worry about him."
Whether there was a faint emphasis on the pronoun or not, Anne answered with asperity,
"And you needn't worry about Alf for that matter. He's far too set on himself to find room for a wife."
Ernie was at Billing's Corner half an hour before the Lewes char-a-banc was due, hanging about at the top of the rise, looking along the white road that runs past Moot Farm under the long swell of the escorting hills.
It was a perfect evening of late May. The sun had already sunk in darkened majesty against the West when the familiar cloud of dust betokened the approach of the four-horse team.
Ruth was sitting on the box beside the driver. Ernie recognized her from afar by the splotch of colour made by her hat, and was filled with an almost overpowering content.