“This silence with the sun and with the sharpness of the frost still on the ground and with you here . . .” he said, but she did not answer.
“The breadth and distance there is in the country to-day, June, don’t you feel it?”
“I don’t know.”
“The country is so full of the sun to-day, June, and I am away from them all, for you have rescued me from the house, so that I am with you. And we have hours of time, this will be the longest walk of all that we have had yet. It is such an adventure. Do you like walking with me, June?”
“Perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t.”
“But you must, or else it will be so dull for you. And you are kind to take me out, for they are old in the house, so old. Poor Nan is dying, and William the butler who is waiting for a pension, and old Pinch who is going to retire next week. Mamma is giving him a cottage rent free. He has worked in the garden for forty years.”
“Do they get pensions? How much?”
“Enough to live on, when they have deserved it. But listen to that cock, June, crowing so boastfully such miles away. And the car droning up Bodlington Hill on its way to Norbury, with the stream just near hurrying by over the stones. And the birds are singing to the fine day, there are so many of them. Do you know the names of birds?”
“No, an’ I wish I did.”
“Nor do I, it does not really matter. But what luck that we should have the sun for our walk. We have had so much rain up to now.”