After all, what did a handsome face matter when it came down to the difficult business of every-day life? It was kindness that counted and sympathy and gentleness and understanding. Her brown eyes grew wistful as she watched his ugly, preoccupied face.
Here was a man who disliked all women even as Chris did, and yet he had found it possible to be kind to her, to befriend her in her loneliness and perplexity. She felt that she could not be sufficiently grateful to him.
Feathers did not speak till they had left the main stream and slipped into the wonderful backwater that lies between Wargrave and Henley. Marie had never seen anything like it in her life. She held her breath in sheer delight as she lay back amongst the cushions and looked up at the canopy of leaves overhead.
There were very few people about. Now and then a laugh reached them across the water or the sound of row-locks, and once a big water rat scurried past them along the margin of rushes and reeds, staring at them for a second with dark, bright eyes before it plunged and disappeared.
Feathers drew in the punt pole and took a paddle.
"Well, how do you like it?" he asked.
Her brown eyes shone.
"I never knew there was anything so lovely in England," she said.
169 "That is the mistake so many people make," he answered. "They rush off abroad with a party of dreadful tourists and tire themselves out in order to see some musty old museum or cathedral, and never trouble to see the beauty spots of their own country. Look behind you now!"
Marie turned her head obediently. They were nearing an old bridge, built so low down to the water that it was only possible for a boat to pass beneath it if the occupants bent their heads.