d walls.

("As if there weren't apples enough here!" thought Mary.)

He got a frog in his throat as he went on to paint in greater detail
for her, who had left it so young, the intimate charm of the home
country--the rich, green, dimpled countryside. And not till now did he
grasp how sorely he had missed it. "Oh, believe me, to talk of 'going
home' is no mere figure of speech, Mary!" In fancy he trod winding
lanes that ran between giant hedges: hedges in tender bud, with dew on
them; or snowed over with white mayflowers; or behung with the fairy
webs and gossamer of early autumn, thick as twine beneath their load of
moisture. He followed white roads that were banked with primroses and
ran headlong down to the sea; he climbed the shoulder of a down on a
spring morning, when the air was alive with larks carolling. But
chiefly it was the greenness that called to him--the greenness of the
greenest country in the world. Viewed from this distance, the homeland
looked to him like one vast meadow. Oh, to tread its grass again!--not
what one knew as grass here, a poor annual, that lasted for a few brief
weeks; but lush meadow-grass, a foot high; or shaven emerald lawns on
which ancient trees spread their shade; or the rank growth in old
orchards, starry with wild flowers, on which fruit-blossoms fluttered
down. He longed, too, for the exquisite finishedness of the mother
country, the soft tints of cloud-veiled northern skies. His eyes ached,
his brows had grown wrinkled from gazing on iron roofs set against the
hard blue overhead; on dirty weatherboards innocent of paint; on
higgledy-piggledy backyards and ramshackle fences; on the straggling
landscape with its untidy trees--all the unrelieved ugliness, in short,
of the colonial scene.

He stopped only for want of breath. Mary was silent. He waited. Still
she did not speak.

He fell to earth with a bump, and was angry. "Come ... out with it! I
suppose all this seems to you just the raving of a lunatic?"

"Oh, Richard, no. But a little ... well, a little unpractical. I never
heard before of any one throwing up a good income because he didn't
like the scenery. It's a step that needs the greatest consideration."

"Good God! Do you think I haven't considered it?--and from every angle?
There isn't an argument for or against, that I haven't gone over a
thousand and one times."

"And with never a word to me, Richard?" Mary was hurt; and showed it.
"It really is hardly fair. For