He laughed. “And this new journal of his?” he asked. “It’s got to be published in London, hasn’t it?”
She gave a slight start, for in their letters to one another they had been discussing this very point.
“No,” she answered, “it could be circulated just as well from, say, Birmingham or Manchester.”
He was choosing his roses. They held their petals wrapped tight round them, trying to keep the cold from their brave hearts. In the warmth they would open out and be gay, until the end.
“Not Liverpool?” he suggested.
“Or even Liverpool,” she laughed.
They looked at one another, and then beyond the sheltering evergreens and the wide lawns to where the great square house seemed to be listening.
“It’s an ugly old thing,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” she contradicted. “It’s simple and big and kind. I always used to feel it disapproved of me. I believe it has come to love me, in its solemn old brick way.”
“It was built by Kent in seventeen-forty for your great-great grandfather,” he explained. He was regarding it more affectionately. “Solid respectability was the dream, then.”