I trudged on, asking people, as I went, the way, finally emerging from the cover of a beautiful wood thro' a wicket gate almost at the entrance to the Farm I sought. At the front door we embraced affectionately and we entered at once, I putting a quite good face upon my afternoon's exertions—when I consider my unbridled fury of a short time before. E——, as brown as a berry, conducted me to my bedroom and I nearly forgot to take this obvious opportunity of kissing her again.
"How are you?" I asked.
"All right," she said, fencing.
"But really?"
(A little nettled): "My dear, that isn't going to satisfy me. You will have to tell me exactly how you are."
After tea, I recovered myself and we went for a walk together. The beauty of the country warmed me up, and in the wood we kissed—I for my part happy and quite content with the present state of our relations, i.e., affectionate but not perfervid.
May 29.
Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything promises to be delightful—young calves, broods of ducklings, and turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the slowness and solemnity of a Castle's portal studded with iron knobs. It thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the other side of the garden wall.
In the afternoon, E—— and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E—— on a deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered. These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits whistled—in the language of our allies—"Bijou, Bijou" and I agreed with every one of them.