Caroline and her father rode out very early one morning at the beginning of June. One of the habits they had formed was to seize to themselves the delicious freshness of the new day, unspoilt by the smoke and stir of towns.
She and he were alone at the Abbey. After more than a year in which the London house had scarcely been used, they were beginning to discuss the advisability of giving it up altogether. They discussed it now as they rode across the dewy grass of the park, on their way to the high ground which would bring them to their favourite view across miles of southward facing country to the sea.
"You see, darling," Caroline was saying, "we always want to be here when we are there, and we very seldom want to be there when we are here. Beatrix generally stays with Aunt Katharine or Aunt Mary, anyhow, and you like staying at your Club if you have to go up alone. Now that Barbara has gone to Paris the Dragon won't have to be in London to look after her, as we thought she must if she went up for classes."
"And what about you, Cara? You shirked most of your London gaieties last year. Are you going to cut yourself off from them altogether?"
She laughed happily. "Fancy wanting London gaieties when you can have this!" she said. "I sang for joy this morning when I woke up and found myself here instead of in London."
"Yes, that's all very well," he said. "I feel like that myself, though I suppose that at my age no satisfaction is quite as hilarious as it is at yours. But it isn't only the gaieties that you miss by cutting yourself off from London. It's being in the swim. When you've been in the swim as long as I have, you know how much of it is necessary to you and how much isn't. And you don't lose all that you've gained for yourself when you begin to sit lightly to it all. But you have to gain it first."
"I'm not sure that I want to gain more than I have," she said. "I have heaps of friends, and we see a good many of them down here. I like seeing those who really do count in that way; you get to know them better. It's the background of life that I love so in the country. You belong to yourself more. Things come to you and you don't have to go out to find them. I believe you feel that too, Daddy."
"Yes, I do," he said, "more than I should have thought possible a year ago. But still I can't see that it is quite the right thing for you to bury yourself down here entirely."
"Don't you feel that it's nice to have me here to welcome you when you come home?" she asked.