Antony went back into the little parlour.
CHAPTER XIII
A DISCOVERY
The morning broke as fair, as blue-skied, as sunny, as the previous day had been gloomy, grey-skied, and wet.
The song of a golden-throated lark was the first sound that Antony heard, as he woke to find the early morning sunshine pouring through the open casement window. He lay very still, listening to the flood of liquid notes, and looking at the square of blue sky, seen through the window. Now and again an ivy leaf tapped gently at the pane, stirred by a little breeze blowing from the sea, and sweeping softly across buttercupped meadow and gorse-grown moorland. Once a flight of rooks passed across the square blue patch, and once a pigeon lighted for an instant on the windowsill, to fly off again on swift, strong wings.
He lay there, drowsily content. For that day at least, there was a pleasant idleness ahead of him, nothing but his own wants to attend to. The morrow would see him armed with spade and rake, probably wrestling with weeds, digging deep in the good brown earth, possibly mowing the grass, and such like jobs as fall to the lot of an under-gardener. Antony smiled to himself. Well, it would all come in the day’s work, and the day’s work would be no novel master to him. The open air, whether under cloud or sunshine, was good. After all, his lot for the year would not be such a bad one. He was in the mood to echo the praises of that brown-feathered morsel pouring forth its lauds somewhere aloft in the blue. Suddenly the song ceased. The bird had come to earth.
For a moment or so longer Antony lay very still, listening to the silence. Then he flung back the bed-clothes, went to the window, and looked out.
He looked across the tiny garden, and the lane, to a wild-rose hedge; fragile pink blossoms swayed gently in the breeze. Beyond the hedge was a field of close-cropped grass, dotted here and there with sheep. To the left a turn in the lane, and the high banks and hedges, shut further view from sight. To the right, and far below the cottage, across meadows and the hidden village of Byestry, lay the sea.