A beautiful spectacle it seemed to Anne, and she felt a new tenderness for her father as she watched. The thin black figure with the head thrown back, the eyes turned up, and the beard jutting out, no longer seemed queer as it had a moment before, when she had first caught sight of it standing under the apple trees.
“He will feel my desertion,” she murmured, a sudden sympathy with her father coming to her, and she felt a love which had been forgotten for many months.
“First mother, and then me,” she said. But her love did not weaken her determination to speak to him of her departure, but strengthened it.
When Mr. Dunnock reached the house, he shook his head, first gently, but then, as a blue-tit still remained perched there, more violently, and then turning round waved his hands towards the birds which had settled in the rose bushes about the door. Anne saw that he was bestowing a benediction. She did not wait longer, but hurrying downstairs, followed her father into his study.
“We see very little of each other now, father,” she said.
Mr. Dunnock started at her words and looked round at her with guilty eyes.
“Yes, Anne, yes,” he murmured. “Do you wish to speak to me? Something perhaps about the housekeeping?” and he began to fidget with his fingers, wishing that she would go away.
“I have wanted to speak to you for some time,” said Anne. “I have been thinking a great deal about my own life. It will seem very selfish to you, and very heartless. It is very selfish....”
“We are all of us selfish,” said Mr. Dunnock. “What is it that you want?”
“I want to go away, at least for a time,” said Anne. “I do not want to settle down for the rest of my life without seeing something of the world. I have never been to London.”