"Beastly?" she repeated. "Don't you think they're beautiful?"
"Yes," he said, "of course I see they're beautiful—for other folks, but not for me. What I like is lanes an' elm trees and farm buildings with red tiles and red walls round fruit gardens—and cherry orchards and thorough good rich medders up for hay, and lilac bushes and bits o' flowers in the gardens, same what I was used to at home."
She thrilled to the homely picture.
"Why, that's what I like too!" she said. "These great hills—I don't see how they can feel like home to anyone. There's a bit of an orchard—one end of it is just a red barn wall—and there are hedges round, and it's all soft warm green lights and shadows—and thrushes sing like mad. That's home!"
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."
"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges, dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy—and the grey wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work—and the fire—and the smell of apples from the loft."
"Yes," he said, "that's it—I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot o' words to talk with."
When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of course, this pleased her very much.
Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on whom it was pleasant to smile, and whom her smiles and her talk pleased. And she thought,—quite honestly,—that she was being very philanthropic and lightening a dull life.