that's all!"

Felix turned so that he could look at her. She was moving round the room
now, meticulously adjusting the framed photographs of her family that
were the only decoration of the walls. How formal, chiselled, and
delicate her face, yet how almost fanatically decisive! How frail and
light her figure, yet how indomitably active! And the memory assailed
him of how, four years ago, she had defeated double pneumonia without
having a doctor, simply by lying on her back. 'She leaves trouble,' he
thought, 'until it's under her nose, then simply tells it that it isn't
there. There's something very English about that.'

She was chasing a bluebottle now with a little fan made of wire, and,
coming close to Felix, said:

"Have you seen these, darling? You've only to hit the fly and it kills
him at once."

"But do you ever hit the fly?"

"Oh, yes!" And she waved the fan at the bluebottle, which avoided it
without seeming difficulty.

"I can't bear hurting them, but I DON'T like flies. There!"

The bluebottle flew out of the window behind Felix and in at the one that
was not behind him. He rose.

"You ought to rest before tea, Mother."

He felt her searching him with her eyes, as if trying desperately to find
something she might bestow upon or do for him.

"Would you like this wire--"

With a feeling that he was defrauding love, he turned and fled. She would
never rest while he was there! And yet there was that in her face which
made him feel a brute to go.

Passing out of the house, sunk in its Monday hush, no vestige of a Bigwig
left, Felix came to that new-walled mound where the old house of the
Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury and Gloucester,' as
said the old chronicles dear to the heart of Clara. And on the wall he
sat him down. Above, in the uncut grass, he could see the burning blue
of a peacock's breast, where the heraldic bird stood digesting grain in
the repose of perfect breeding, and below him gardeners were busy with
the gooseberries. 'Gardeners and the gooseberries of the great!' he
thought. 'Such is the future of our Land.' And he watched them. How
methodically they went to work! How patient and well-done-for they
looked! After all, was it not the ideal future? Gardeners, gooseberries,
and the great! Each of the three content in that station of life into
which--! What more could a country want? Gardeners, gooseberries, and
the great! The phrase had a c