Caroline laughed again. "'Even in the summer'!" she repeated. "It's the best of all times."
"Oh, well, I know," he said. "It's more beautiful, and that's what you like about it, isn't it? It's what I like too. A night like this is heavenly. Let's stop here a few minutes and take it in. I suppose your beautiful stone seats are meant to be sat on, aren't they? We ought to do justice to your new garden."
"I'm afraid you're laughing at my new garden," said Caroline. "But perhaps it will do the poor thing good to be treated as if it were really grown up. It will be lovely in a year or two, you know."
She moved across the grass, which even the light of the moon showed not yet to have settled into smooth unbroken turf, and sat down on a stone bench in a niche of yew. The separate trees of which it was composed were as large as could have been safely transplanted, but they had not yet come together, and were not tall enough to create the effect of seclusion, except in the eye of faith. Caroline laughed again. "It ought to be rather romantic," she said, "but I'm afraid it isn't quite yet."
"I should think any garden romantic with you in it," said the young man, taking his seat by her side.
"Thanks," she said lightly. "I do feel that I fit in. But I think you had better wait a year or two to see how all this is going to fit me. Come down for Whitsuntide in three years' time, when the hedges have grown up. Then I will sit here and make a real picture for you."
She made an entrancing picture as it was, her white frock revealing the grace of her slim body, the moon silvering her pretty fair hair and resting on the delicate curves of her cheek and her neck. The yews were tall enough to give her their sombre background, and a group of big trees behind them helped out the unfinished garden picture.
"It has altered you, you know, already," said Francis, rather unexpectedly.
"What has altered me? Living in a garden? That's what I've been doing for the last few weeks."
"Yes. Living in a garden. Living in the country. You're awfully sweet as a country girl, Caroline."