"There are hundreds of places like that in Kent," said I, when I had finished. "Kent is full of them; and when the apple blossom is out and lambs are in the orchard, I can tell you you want to live then. You want to be up with the sun lest you should miss an hour of it. I've been all round the world, but I've never seen anything to touch an apple orchard in Kent, or any English meadow in the heat of summer. I know nothing like it—I know nothing equal to it, unless it is those cliffs at Ballysheen when the gorse and the heather are out and the whole place throbs with the humming of bees. That, perhaps, is as good. But it's too far away. I want you to have a place where, if ever you need me, you can send for me at a moment's notice. There would be times, perhaps, when you might feel lonely."
She had been looking down into the fire, interlacing her fingers, doing and undoing them as in an idle moment, a child plaits rushes in the silent meadows. But when I said she might feel lonely, she looked up quickly to my face.
"Did you mean to go alone?" she asked, "to live there—quite alone?"
"There would be some one to help you look after it," said I.
"Yes—but—otherwise, alone."
"Who else is there that you know?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No one?"
"I don't know anybody."
"But if you feel what you do about the country," said I, "I don't think you'd be lonely. And if ever you wanted me—at any time—I could come down. There'd be some inn at the village where I could put up."