Dinner time came. They ate bread and cheese in the kitchen.

"Well, we're getting on," said Brangwen, cheerfully.

Two more loads arrived. The afternoon passed away in a
struggle with the furniture, upstairs. Towards five o'clock,
appeared the last loads, consisting also of Mrs. Brangwen and
the younger children, driven by Uncle Fred in the trap. Gudrun
had walked with Margaret from the station. The whole family had
come.

"There!" said Brangwen, as his wife got down from the cart:
"Now we're all here."

"Ay," said his wife pleasantly.

And the very brevity, the silence of intimacy between the two
made a home in the hearts of the children, who clustered round
feeling strange in the new place.

Everything was at sixes and sevens. But a fire was made in
the kitchen, the hearth-rug put down, the kettle set on the hob,
and Mrs. Brangwen began towards sunset to prepare the first
meal. Ursula and Gudrun were slaving in the bedrooms, candles
were rushing about. Then from the kitchen came the smell of ham
and eggs and coffee, and in the gaslight, the scrambled meal
began. The family seemed to huddle together like a little camp
in a strange place. Ursula felt a load of responsibility upon
her, caring for the half-little ones. The smallest kept near the
mother.

It was dark, and the children went sleepy but excited to bed.
It was a long time before the sound of voices died out. There
was a tremendous sense of adventure.

In the morning everybody was awake soon after dawn, the
children crying:

"When I wakened up I didn't know where I was."

There were the strange sounds of the town, and the repeated
chiming of the big church bells, so much harsher and more
insistent than the little bells of Cossethay. They looked
through the windows past the other new red houses to the wooded
hill across the valley. They had all a delightful sense of space
and liberation, space and light and air.

But gradually all set to work. They were a careless, untidy
family. Yet when once they set about to get the house in order,
the thing went with felicity and quickness. By evening the place
was roughly established.

They would not have a servant to live in the house, only a
woman who could go home at night. And they would not even have
the woman yet. They wanted to do as they liked in their own
home, with no stranger in the midst.

CHAPTER XV

THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY

A storm of industry raged on in the house. Ursula did n