“I was down in the garden the next morning before the sun was hot. I had always loved my bit of garden, and by the help of a hoe walked all round it, feeling a little sad to see how it had gone to ruin, but already making plans for the future.
“‘Ah, Mr Hendrick!’ said a cheery voice, and I recognised a neighbour with whom I had often ridden up to business of a morning; ‘glad to see you so much better.’
“‘Thank you, I am much better,’ I said, catching the extended hand, and feeling a warm glow at my heart in the friendly grasp.
“‘By the way don’t be offended,’ he said, ‘but are you going to leave your house?’
“‘I am thinking of doing so,’ I said sadly.
“‘I don’t mean that,’ he said hastily. ‘I mean for a month or six weeks. An old friend of mine, a country lawyer, wants a furnished residence for self and family for a time, handy to town, where he has a big railway case on. I thought, perhaps if you were going to the sea side for a bit—you know—he’s well off—ask stiff rent, and that sort of thing—eh?—think it over.’
“‘I—I will,’ I said, gasping for breath; for this new piece of good fortune was almost too much for me.
“Suffice it that I promised to send him word, and the result was that, though it delayed my going for a few days, before the next week was over I was down in a pleasant cottage by the sea side, with not only enough for current expenses, but a good surplus coming from the rent of our own house, for my neighbour had secured for me a far higher sum than I should have asked; and there was no occasion to touch the fifty pounds, with which I cleared off all my debts.
“That was a calm and delicious time, when with the sweet sense of returning strength I lay upon the sands, drawing in the iodine-laden sea-breeze, and seeming to feel a change day by day. We had the most cheerful letters from the girls and our boy, telling us of their success, and Hetty’s were above all long and affectionate.
“But I was not satisfied; there seemed to me to be a forced gaiety about Hetty’s letters that troubled me, and I could not think them real, for it seemed to me as if she wrote these notes solely for the sake of making me cheerful, and they had the opposite result. In fact, I would at that time far rather have heard that she was uncomfortable, and longing for the time when she might return home.