On one side of this quadrangle was the long, long barn or
shed which he had made into a cottage for his youngest daughter
Priscilla. One saw little blue-and-white check curtains at the long
windows, and inside, overhead, the grand old timbers of the high-pitched
shed. This was Prissy's house. Fifty yards away was the pretty little new
cottage which he had built for his daughter Magdalen, with the vegetable
garden stretching away to the oak copse. And then away beyond the lawns
and rose trees of the house-garden went the track across a shaggy, wild
grass space, towards the ridge of tall black pines that grew on a
dyke-bank, through the pines and above the sloping little bog, under the
wide, desolate oak trees, till there was Winifred's cottage crouching
unexpectedly in front, so much alone, and so primitive.
It was Winifred's own house, and the gardens and the bit of common and
the boggy slope were hers: her tiny domain. She had married just at the
time when her father had bought the estate, about ten years before the
war, so she had been able to come to Egbert with this for a marriage
portion. And who was more delighted, he or she, it would be hard to say.
She was only twenty at the time, and he was only twenty-one. He had about
a hundred and fifty pounds a year of his own--and nothing else but his
very considerable personal attractions. He had no profession: he earned
nothing.
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