"One learns them by watching," Jeanne remarked. "I suppose you have lived here all your life."
"All my life," the girl answered, "and my father and grandfather before me. 'Tis a queer country, but them as is born and bred here seldom leaves it. Sometimes they try. They go to the next village inland, or to some town, or to foreign parts, but sooner or later if they live they come back."
Jeanne nodded sympathetically.
"It is a wonderful country," she said. "When I saw it first it seemed to me that it was depressing. Now I love it!"
"And I," the girl remarked, with a sudden passion in her tone, "I hate it!"
Jeanne looked at her, surprised.
"It sounds so strange to hear you say that," she remarked. "I should have thought that any one who had lived here always would have loved it. Every day I am here I seem to discover new beauties, a new effect of colouring, a new undertone of the sea, or to hear the cry of some new bird."
"It is beautiful sometimes," the girl answered. "I love it when the creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the pasturage lands. I love it when the sea changes its colour as the clouds pass over the sun, and the wind blows from the west. The place is well enough then. But there are times when it is nothing but a great wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold here, cold to the bone. Then I hate the place worse than ever."
"Have you ever tried to go away for a time?" Jeanne asked.
"I went once to London," the girl said, turning her head a little away. "I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had expected, but they didn't, and my father died suddenly, so I came home to take care of the farm."