She caught his hand and laid her cheek against it. "Oh, I would, I would, if Notya didn't need me."
"No one," he said, "needs you as I do. We'll be married in the spring."
Her hand and her smile acknowledged what he said while her eyes were busy on his thin face, his worn, well-brushed clothes, the books and papers on his desk, the arrangements of the room.
"I don't like any of your furniture," she said suddenly. "And those ornaments are ugly."
He took them from the mantelpiece and threw them into the waste-paper basket.
"Anything else? It won't hold the furniture."
"Ah, you're nice," she said, and, going to the window, she looked out on the garden, where the apple-trees twisted themselves out of a rough lawn.
"When you marry me," Zebedee said, standing beside her and speaking quietly, "we'll leave this house to Daniel and Eliza. There's one outside the town, on the moor road, but set back in a big garden, a square house. Shall we—shall we go and look at it?"
"Shall we?" she repeated, and they faced each other unsmiling.
"It's an old house, with big square windows, and there's a rising copse behind it."