Sloping away from our very feet were our own orchards and coppices, the bright lichen on the twisted old apple trees showing almost a blue-green against the purple of the bare birch tree branches still lower down.
The sun was dropping behind the larches that ridged the opposite hills. Birds everywhere were explaining to each other that they must—they really must—set about house-hunting the very first thing in the morning.
Out in the lane, the mountain spring was over-full and singing a riotous song of jubilation as it tumbled out of the little wooden trough into the pool below, and tore away down into the valley.
“It’s a marvellous world,” said Virginia as we gazed at the vast panorama that stretched before us; and then she added, “Do you know, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer a spring of water outside the gate to all the stop-cocks and water-mains in the world.”
Next morning a letter from the Head of Affairs skipped airily over the episode of his meeting with the builder, concentrating on the point that I was to stay where I was, as he would join me in a few days. But Ursula supplied the missing details.
“After I saw you off at Paddington,” she wrote, “I hurried back as fast as I could; I felt that I should at least like to see if the four outside walls remained of what was once your happy home. Because, though we didn’t let you know, the builder confided to me, as you were leaving, that he had discovered the whole front of the house was in a most shocking condition, necessitating prompt ‘shoring-up’ (whatever that may mean), and requiring to be underpinned immediately. But by the time I reached the place where your gates ought to have been—but weren’t—I found the Head of Affairs (he’d sent a wire as soon as he landed in England, but it evidently never reached you) bestowing as much gratuitous eloquence on the builder and the Water Company as would have run an election. What did he say? Why, everything that is in the English language, and in a hundred different keys! Sometimes he singled out some separate ‘official,’ and gave it him, personally, in considerable detail.
“His analysis of the private character of the builder was nothing short of an epic; and as for the turncock!—what he said about turncocks was a revelation to an unsuspecting ratepayer like myself—No, it might be as well not to repeat it; but I feel sure that turncock won’t call, with a long double knock, for a Christmas-box next December. Indeed, his remarks on the mental capacity of every single person employed by the Water Company lead me to think that your family won’t be really popular with the Metropolitan Water Board for some time to come!
“And then, when he had said everything that could possibly be said about each man standing there, and about water and pipes and stop-cocks and gravel and pavement and suchlike things, he announced his intention of going on the roof to inspect where the builder proposed to put the pile of new slates.
“Now it’s a funny thing, but that builder was not nearly so pressing that he should go up and see for himself, as he was when talking to you. But he insisted, and once up, he started all over again, and made such forceful comments on the subject of slates—and more especially the men who put on the slates—that I was afraid they would come through the roof.