“No.” He smiled. “All the same, I'm going to see after my mail.”
“You promised you wouldn't have any.”
“There's some business coming through that's amusing me. Honest. It doesn't get on my nerves at all.”
“Want a secretary?”
“No, thanks, old thing! Isn't that quite English?”
“Too English! Go away.” But none the less in broad daylight she returned the kiss. “I'm off to Pardons. I haven't been to the house for nearly a week.”
“How've you decided to furnish Jane Elphick's bedroom?” he laughed, for it had come to be a permanent Castle in Spain between them.
“Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade,” she answered, and ran downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she passed under the holmoaks, sought the farm-house at the back of Friars Pardon. The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-opened door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler's old enemy, crawled out and besought her to enter.
Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between his knees, his head drooped. Though she had never seen death before, her heart, that missed a beat, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his nose, she heard herself saying: “Don't howl! Please don't begin to howl, Scottie, or I shall run away!”
She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon; sat after a while on the steps by the door, her arms round the dog's neck, waiting till some one should come. She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friars Pardon slash its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of Iggulden's last lighted fire gradually thin and cease. Against her will she fell to wondering how many Moones, Elphicks, and Torrells had been swung round the turn of the broad Mall stairs. Then she remembered the old man's talk of being “up-ended like a milk-can,” and buried her face on Scottie's neck. At last a horse's feet clinked upon flags, rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard, and she found herself facing the vicar—a figure she had seen at church declaiming impossibilities (Sophie was a Unitarian) in an unnatural voice.