"How beautiful," said Wynifred,—"how beautiful it is!"
The rest of evening was over it all—over the tiny, ancient grey church far, far away towards the valley's mouth; over the peaceable red cows which lay meditatively here and there among the grass; over the sun-burnt group of laborers, who, their day's mowing done, were slowly making their way down to their hidden cottages, with fearless eyes of Devon blue turned on the strangers and their carriage.
"What splendid terra-cotta-colored people!" said Miss Allonby, following them with her appreciative gaze. Mr. Cranmer was unable to help laughing. "They are a delicate shade of the red-brown of the cliffs," said the girl, dreamily. "How full of color everything is!"
Her companion mentally echoed the remark: it was the concise expression of a thought which in him had been only vague. She was right,—it was the color, the strange glow of grass, and cliffs, and sea, which so impressed eyes accustomed only to the "pale, unripened beauties of the north."
"That is Poole Farm, right beneath us," he said. "It is not so near as it looks."
"Oh, if I were only there!" she burst out; and then was suddenly still, as if ashamed of her involuntary cry.
"Get on as fast you can, Joseph," said Mr. Cranmer, and felt himself unaccountably obliged to sit so as not to see the pale face beside him, nor to pity the evident force which she found it necessary to employ to avoid a complete break-down.
When at last they stopped at the farm-yard gate, and he had helped her out, and seen her tall, slight figure disappear swiftly within the house, he experienced a relaxation of mental tension which was, he told himself, greatly out of proportion to the occasion; and, strolling into the big kitchen, was sensible of a quite absurd throb of relief when he heard that Dr. Forbes hoped his patient was just a little better.
"It is strange how people vary," he reflected. "I have met two girls, one to-day, one yesterday, neither of whom is in the smallest degree like any girl I ever saw before."
By which it will be inferred that his acquaintance with modern developments of girlhood had been limited pretty much to one particular class of society. The girl art-student he had never met in any of her varieties; and this opportunity of contemplating a new class, of perusing a fresh chapter in his favorite branch of study, was by no means without its charm.