“Yes, I could do that. I prefer to live with my work. There is nothing like walking from the breakfast table across the room to the easel.”
“Of course you can find fault with everything; nothing is perfect.”
“There goes the train!” cried Sally. “No use in running now, you've missed it.”
“How very provoking; the next isn't till half-past seven—just an hour to wait.”
“Well,” said Maggie, “if you have missed the train we may as well go at once and ask Mrs. Heald if she has let her rooms.”
They walked towards a block of cottages—at one end the “Cricketer's Arms,” at the other the grocery business; and the cottage that joined the grocery business was remarkable for a bit of green paling and wooden balcony, now covered with Virginia creeper. Frank thought at once of new-laid eggs, and the sunlight glancing through a great mass of greenery, and he resolved if a sacrifice were necessary to live at Southwick, he would put his picture aside and begin his novel. The people in the house pleased him, and he ran on in his way thinking how English and trustworthy they seemed, liking the green parrot that rubbed its head affectionately against the grey ringlets of a very ladylike old person; and Mrs. Heald, brisk as a bee, notwithstanding her lame leg, who led the way up the ladder-like cottage staircase.
“How nice and clean everything is; books and engravings along the passages. How unlike Ireland!”
But the sitting-room was full of horsehair sofas and chairs. These displeased Frank, but some handsome china—an entire tea service in Crown Derby—reconciled him to the room. In the bedroom they found a huge four-poster of old time, with a lengthy bolster and imposing pillows, and they were shown into another and a similar room. One looked out on the green, the other on the fields that lay between the green and the Manor House.
“If that elm were cut down you could see my window,” said Sally.
“Which room do you like the best?” said Maggie.