Then with a swift "Good night" Eleanor breaks away and vanishes among the shadows.
"A wife," says Philip to himself, "is something between a hindrance and a help. Is this the turn of the tide?"
A nightingale broke into song. "Yes!" it cried; "yes—yes—yes!"
CHAPTER II.
"IMPARADIS'D IN ONE ANOTHER'S ARMS."—Milton.
Eleanor is busy in the morning sunlight, brightening the pewter dinner service, the pride of the Grebby family, passed down from generation to generation, and priceless in her eyes. She can hear the preparations without for an early start to the neighbouring market. Her mother is loading a cart of vegetables, while her father "shoos" the cackling geese into wicker pens, and harnesses "Black Bess" the steady old mare, who is almost one of themselves. And Eleanor is glad that the market (a weekly centre of attraction to the old village) will leave her in peaceful solitude.
She breaks out into a glad song, which mingles with the twittering of birds:
"There was a jolly miller once,
Lived on the River Dee."
"Eleanor, Eleanor, give me a hand with these vegetables," cries her mother's voice. There is a thud, and a whole sack of potatoes fall pell-mell into the yard, still muddy from yesterday's rain.