Not till Egbert came with his bride. And he had come to fill it
with flowers.
The house was ancient and very uncomfortable. But he did not want to
alter it. Ah, marvellous to sit there in the wide, black, time-old
chimney, at night when the wind roared overhead, and the wood which he
had chopped himself sputtered on the hearth! Himself on one side the
angle, and Winifred on the other.
Ah, how he had wanted her: Winifred! She was young and beautiful and
strong with life, like a flame in sunshine. She moved with a slow grace
of energy like a blossoming, red-flowered bush in motion. She, too,
seemed to come out of the old England, ruddy, strong, with a certain
crude, passionate quiescence and a hawthorn robustness. And he, he was
tall and slim and agile, like an English archer with his long supple legs
and fine movements. Her hair was nut-brown and all in energic curls and
tendrils. Her eyes were nut-brown, too, like a robin's for brightness.
And he was white-skinned with fine, silky hair that had darkened from
fair, and a slightly arched nose of an old country family. They were a
beautiful couple.
The house was Winifred's. Her father was a man of energy, too. He had
come from the north poor. Now he was moderately rich. He had bought this
fair stretch of inexpensive land, down in Hampshire. Not far from the
tiny church of the almost extinct hamlet stood his own house, a
commodious old farmhouse standing back from the road across a bare
grassed yard.
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