“A what?”
“A sock—pet lamb.”
“That would be nice—but, when it grew a sheep?”
“You could send it to the butcher.”
“Never. Tell Boyce, with thanks for his remembrance, I’d rather not. Well, good-by until dinner.”
She ran upstairs, humming complacently, and in a leisurely way put on her short skirt and narrow-brimmed hat. Through her window she saw Jethro cross the garden and stroll into the yard, his broad shoulders proudly back and his hands deep in his breeches pockets. Her heart swelled with satisfaction—in him and in the broad acres, plowed or pasture, and in the beautifully built golden ricks which hedged the house. Everything was hers.
She went downstairs. Gainah, for the first time for ten years, had gone out for the day to see an old friend some miles up the line. Pamela thought that the house seemed more like home, more her own, without the elder woman, and she began to speculate on the time when Folly Corner would no longer roof them both.
She stood in the passage by the window. Gainah’s geraniums, preserved from frost in the kitchen all through the winter, were blooming. The future mistress decided that she would banish them. She had not reached the altitude of admiring an earthenware pot. Then she glanced at the wall, at the rude prints in narrow black frames. Mrs. Clutton had been enthusiastic about them, saying they were “Bunbury’s”—which meant nothing to Pamela. She couldn’t endure those fat women in low dresses, and those men with wigs and lewd expressions.
She sat down in the armchair by the oak table, idly putting on her gloves. There was a hand-bell on the table—one of her institutions—together with a smart tray for letters. The blue Oriental bowl, instead of being littered with string and screwed envelopes, was reserved for cards, and in place of the farming papers was the current copy from the library of the most cultured magazine then running its brief life. She thought that the extraordinary cover struck a distinctive note directly one entered the house.
The kitchen door was at the other end of the passage, immediately opposite the drawing-room. It was ajar. She was just stretching her gloved hand to the bell, to tell them that Daborn might bring round her bicycle, when a man’s voice struck on her heart.