“Have you seen The Church Times?” called Mr. Dunnock, coming back from watching the birds.
“Here it is, father,” she answered, and running downstairs surrendered it to him without a tremor. Her father took it absentmindedly, saying as he did so:
“I think there is some straw somewhere, my dear. Would you ask Noah to scatter it about the lawn? It will be useful for the sparrows; the nearest rick is several hundred yards away, a long journey for them, almost an impossible one if the wind should veer to the east. On a calm day like this, it is not so important, but there are not many calm days in March, and in any case it will save a great deal of trouble.”
At another moment Anne might have been vexed at her father’s solicitude for the hated sparrows, but she was in a mood to forgive his follies, and she ran off at once to the potting-shed to find the straw, and scattered it on the lawn herself.
All the morning she was beside herself with excitement; and she found it hard to answer Maggie sensibly when she spoke of their plan of whitewashing the scullery. When the proposal had been put forward a fortnight before by Anne, it had seemed to mark an epoch, but Maggie found that it was suddenly brushed on one side, her feelings were hurt, the date was left uncertain, and Anne had fled out into the garden before she had time to question her again.
The first tulips were standing stiffly to attention in their field-grey uniforms, their buds unopened, but the girl could not think of tulips as she paced up and down the borders. Her life at the vicarage was coming to an end, and she must speak to her father, but after thinking over what she would say for an hour, she could find no words, and came to the conclusion that it would be unwise to open the subject before she had decided where she was going. Her father would be certain to raise objections, and they would appear more formidable if her plans were not fixed. It would be better for both of them if the parting were to come suddenly.
“I will go to him in his study,” she said, “when my bag is packed,” and with this settled in her mind she felt happy for the first time that morning. She had come out to enjoy the warm spring weather, but, as soon as she had decided not to speak to her father, and before she had time to look about her, she saw Maggie waving from the kitchen door and knew that it was time for lunch.
After the strain of making plans about her future she found the meal a pleasant one, emotion had given her an appetite, and, as she ate, Anne enjoyed listening to her father inveighing against the stupidity of old Noah.
“You would scarcely believe it,” said Mr. Dunnock, “but within half an hour of your having scattered the straw, that old fool was sweeping it up. I ordered him to stop, but he would not listen to me until I had taken him by the arm and had explained my reasons. But so blind is the prejudice of the rustics about here, that he said that he would as soon poison the sparrows as not. I was forced to speak to him very severely. It is his first lapse since the question of the strawberry nets last year.”
The mild sunlit air was full of bees as Anne left the vicarage after lunch; the celandines were gaping in the sunlight on the bank above the Broad Ditch. Wagtails ran round the water’s edge, goldfinches flew up into the elms, and yellowhammers trotted before her on the road.