the summer, men, women and
children, with heaps of mackerel that they pack in boxes for London and
such places--so much mackerel they get that there's nothing else ate in
the place for the season, and yet if you want fish-guts for manure they
make you pay inland prices, and do your own carting."

"I think it's a delicious place," he retorted, teasing her, "I've a mind
to bring you here for our honeymoon."

"Martin, you'd never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts,
and I've told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a
dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and
hearing French spoken."

"Yes--perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful,
but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill--even in the days
before the flood."

"I want to see the Eiffel Tower--where they make the lemonade--and I
want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats."

"Joanna--do you know the hat which suits you best?"

"Which?" she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.

"The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens
first thing in the morning."

"That old thing I Why I My! Lor! Martin! That's an old basket that I tie
under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father's."

"It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honore--it's brown and
golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from
under it, and there's a shadow on your face, over your eyes--the shadow
stops just above your mouth--your mouth is all of your face that I can
see dearly, and it's your mouth that I love most ..."

He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the
chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face
with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek. She drew her hands up
sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.

For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved
on. Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna's eyes and in her
heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache. The trap lurched in
the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and
gravel, skirting the beach. Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the
little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows
of the road as with a foam--it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them,
and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was sin