Patricia looked dumbly over the knee-deep green to the sun-lit tree-fringe beyond. The house, _her house_, stood in a semi-circle of woodland; the green trees folded it lovingly. What did she care about keeping stock? Mr. Tebbits drew a vast key from his trouser-pocket; opened the front-door. “This be what we calls the hall,” he began, “the kitchens be along the passage. . . .” Mr. Tebbits talked, as the British peasant talks, interminably repetitive, all the time they were inspecting “Sunflowers.” But Patricia hardly heard him. Already in her mind she had taken the place; was settling herself and her family into it. This hall now, with its deep fireplace, its windows either side the door, (which would need heavy brown-velvet curtains), must be the drawing-room. The dining-room, leading out of the drawing-room, would be small, still. . . . And the tiny “study” must be Peter’s. “Kitchen-range good,” thought Patricia. “Hope it doesn’t burn too much coal. . . .” She passed up the balustered stair-case, Tebbits clumping at her heels; found square bed-rooms, opening onto greenery, a good modern bath-room—(“wonder of wonders,” thought Patricia)—and, best of all, at the end of the corridor, running full-length of the north side, a long apartment which would be ideal for the children. . . . Of course, she had fallen in love with the place; meant to have it at all costs. Yet even Francis, who had as yet very little sense of home, admitted to himself, as he waited in the bare hall, the excellence of Sunflowers. It was a strange combination of solid pre-Georgian brickwork without; of old wood and modern plaster within. Mr. Tebbits’ grandfather had converted it originally, from the shell of a three-hundred-year-old tithe barn; running his floor-boards over beams of oak; letting in the heavy fan-lighted front door, the deep window-sashes; throwing out the red-tiled square-beamed kitchen. Mr. Tebbits’ father had unroofed the kitchen, carefully, preserving _his_ father’s tilework, added the long room above. Then the grandson of the original builder, dissatisfied with the narrow entrance corridor, had broken it down, joined it to the parlour. Till finally _his_ son Charlie—(“he be a bit new-fangled be Charlie”)—had seized the opportunity presented when the new Company ran its mains over the hill, to modernize the water-supply, to construct a bath-room. (“An’ a good job they boys made of it, missis. These pipes, they _be_ pipes.”) It was while replastering and “making all good with Parian” that the idea of a “garrige” had come to Charlie Tebbits: and a “garrige” he and his brothers forthwith constructed, using (as their great-grandfather had used his tithe-barn) the shell of an old ramshackle stable, now concrete-floored and water-tight. But the “modern” stabling constructed by _their_ father, the “boys” had not touched, except for the throwing of two stalls into a loose-box—just “case any one might be wanting it.”