“It’s very nice. Why didn’t you come, or write? It nearly broke my heart. If I had not seen your name in the paper yesterday I should have married Jethro.” “I’m very glad you didn’t.” He looked sleepily at the beauty of her flushed cheeks, at the depths of her happy eyes. “You saw the page advertisement in the _Standard?_ We’re spending thousands in advertisements--throw a sprat to catch a herring. Does the carrier still bring the paper? What’s the fellow’s name?” “Buckman.” “That’s it. The same slow old horse--Hackty. You see I’ve remembered that. I suppose they mean it for Hector, or perhaps Active. Gad! what a sleepy hole! I felt like being in a dentist’s chair the whole time, half under the gas, you know, just going off. If you went back in fifty years, they’d be just the same. It’s so precious dull that they’d blow their brains out--if they had any.” “Jethro has been so good,” she said, feeling numbly that Jethro was already very, very far away. She actually laughed, adding: “He insisted on my bringing up flowers, eggs, some quince jam.” “That stunning quince jam,” he said boyishly. “Jeth’s a good sort. Was he very much cut up? It was too bad.” He gave her another kiss, without any protest on her part, any courtliness on his; quite as a matter of course. “He was splendid. Poor, dear old Jethro! You wouldn’t understand. You’ll only laugh. You always laugh at things that make me want to cry--it’s the way with a man. He was so simple, so grand. He was like a Greek god, very calm, but not a bit indifferent. He regarded it so broadly--talked of Nature. He is all Nature. He is a great, simple, clean-living ox--slow, reflective, not a bit stupid. He seemed to be above or past all the small teasing, tearing strings which drag mean hearts like yours and mine. I’ve been talking a great deal of nonsense and you are annoyed.” She looked quite frightened as Edred got up abruptly and rang the bell. The past ten minutes had been so sweet that she would have accepted them willingly as eternity. “Not a bit.” He shrugged. “But it’s rather rough to compare him to one of his own oxen. Do you remember how proud he was of his stock--murderous black beasts with tremendous horns? I tell you I didn’t half like crossing some of those fields in the twilight.” The page came in. He looked at her boldly as she sat on the couch. She decided that her first step of authority should be the dismissal of that boy. Edred ordered tea. Everything was dainty, strangely dainty to her, because she was fresh from the coarse, lavish hospitality of Sussex. The sandwiches were evanescent--a suggestion of yellow and green. Edred tilted the cream into her cup; at Folly Corner they often had to put up with skim milk because Jethro insisted on having so many pounds of butter made weekly. He had his stern economies; believed in making farming thoroughly pay. When eggs fetched more than a shilling a dozen almost every one was sent to market.