Ha! how good it was to smell the rooms through which the
pure air breathed freely! All the front of the house was draped with
purple clematis; in the garden were sun-flowers and hollyhocks and
lowly plants innumerable; on the red and lichened tiles pigeons were
cooing themselves into a doze; the horse's hoofs rang with a
pleasant clearness on the stones as he was led to his cool stable.
Her heart throbbing with excess of delight, Jane pushed back the
diamond-paned casement of her bedroom, the same room she had
occupied last year and the year before, and buried her face in
clematis. Then the tea that Mrs. Pammenter had made ready;--how
delicious everything tasted! how white the cloth was! how fragrant
the cut flowers in the brown jug!
But Michael had found the journey a greater tax upon his strength
than he anticipated. Whilst Sidney and Jane talked merrily over the
tea-table the old man was thinking. 'Another year they will come
without me,' and he smiled just to hide his thoughts. In the evening
he smoked his pipe on a garden-seat, for the most part silent, and
at sunset he was glad to go up to his chamber.
Jane was renewing her friendship with the Pammenters' eldest girl,
an apple-checked, red-haired, ungraceful, but good-natured lass of
sixteen.
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