“What are you hiding up in your mind now? Tell me quick! Tell me, Wolf!”

But he only laughed at her, waved his hand, and went out.

Running downstairs again, he returned to the kitchen, moved the steaming kettle to the side of the stove, turned the spoon in the oatmeal, and then, crossing the little passage where his own grey overcoat and Gerda’s cream-coloured cloak, hanging side by side on their adjoining pegs, regarded him with equivocal intentness, he opened the front-door and went out into the road.

In one warm inrushing wave the fragrance of the whole West Country seemed to flow through him as he came forth. Sap-sweet emanations from the leafy recesses of all the Dorset woods on that side of High Stoy seemed to mingle at that moment with the rank, grassy breath of all the meadow-lands of Somerset.