t was a very limp and exhausted Claire who arrived at the farm that
evening, and if she had had her own way she would have hurried to bed
without waiting for a meal, but the kind countrywoman displayed such
disappointment at the idea that she allowed herself to be dissuaded, sat
down to a table spread with home-made dainties and discovered that she
was hungrier than she had believed. The fried ham and eggs, the fresh
butter, the thick yellow cream, the sweet coarse bread, were all the
best of their kind, and Claire smiled at her own expense as she looked
at the emptied dishes, and reflected that, for a person who had
professed herself unable to eat a bite, she had made a pretty good
sweep!

The bed was somewhat bumpy, as farmhouse beds have a habit of being;
there was one big ball in especial which took many wrigglings to avoid;
but on the other hand the sheets smelt deliciously, not of lavender, but
of lemon thyme, and the prevailing air of cleanliness was delicious
after the smoke-laden atmosphere of town. Claire told herself that she
could not expect to sleep. She resigned herself to hear the clock
strike every hour--and as a matter of fact after ten o'clock she was
unconscious of the whole world, until her breakfast-tray was carried
into the room next morning.

After breakfast she had another nap, and after lunch still another, and
in the intervals wandered about the farm-yard, laboriously striving to
take an interest in what really interested her not at all. Hens seemed
to her the dullest of created creatures, pigs repelled, cows were
regarded with uneasy suspicion, and sheep, seen close at hand, lost all
the picturesque quality of a distant flock, and became stupid long-faced
creatures, by no means as clean as they might be. Milking-time aroused
no ambition to experiment on her own account, and a glass of foaming new
milk proved unexpectedly nauseous. Sad as it was to confess it, she
infinitely preferred the chalked and watered edition of the city!

Indoors things were no better, for the tiny sitting-room stood by itself
at the end of a passage, cut off from the life of the house. It was
spotlessly clean and the pride of its owner's heart, but contained
nothing of interest to an outsider. Pictures there were none, with the
exception of portraits of the farmer and his wife, of the enlarged
photograph type, and a selection of framed funeral cards in a corner.
Books there were none, with the exception of a