"Do you think I could forget it? I remember every turn of the house."
"Let us go outside, then."
She led the way, and he followed, to the trellis arbour, a few steps from the drawing-room door. The long lilac blooms had gone with the spring, but the luxuriant summer leafage cast a grateful shade. Roger Orme sat in a wicker chair and fanned himself with his straw hat.
"Delightful!" he said. "And I smell stocks! It does carry me back. I wonder if I have been away at all."
"I'm afraid you have," said Winifred—"for twenty years."
"Well, I'm not going away again. I've had my share of work. And what's the good of work just to make money? I've made enough. I sold out before I left."
"But in your letters you always said you liked America."
"So I did. It's the only country in the world for the young and eager. If I had been born there, I should have no use for Dunsfield. But a man born and bred among old, sleepy things has the nostalgia of old, sleepy things in his blood. Now tell me about the sleepy old things. I want to hear."
"I think I have written to you about everything that ever happened in Dunsfield," she said.
But still there were gaps to be bridged in the tale of births and marriages and deaths, the main chronicles of the neighbourhood. He had a surprising memory, and plucked obscure creatures from the past whom even Winifred had forgotten.