The birds began
to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was
still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were
in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.

Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage,
in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing
water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard
footsteps and looked over the gate.

"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had.
Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the
eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to
all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the
doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the
chair she offered her.

It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident
signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and
two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must
have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the
room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of
worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each
accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for
any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by
constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people
through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of
appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one
would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne
Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.

Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager
to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a
tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and
well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and
rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way
in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been
done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for
sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with
only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who
still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to
express her o