Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/283

 whispering tree was a comrade that we met God in the evening. It was the pleasant living room, where each familiar piece of furniture smiled a welcome to us when we entered, that was home. Through half-a-dozen "reception rooms," we wandered, a stranger. The millionaire, who, reckoning interest at five per cent., paid ten thousand a year to possess an old master—how often really did he look at it? What greater artistic enjoyment did he get out of it than from looking at it in a public gallery? The joy of possession, it was the joy of the miser, of the dog in the manger. Were the silver birches in the moonlight more beautiful because we owned the freehold of the hill?

She remembered her walking tours with Jim. Their packs upon their backs, and the open road before them. The evening meal at the wayside Inn, and the sweet sleep between coarse sheets. She had never cared for travel since then. It had always been such a business: the luggage and the crowd, and the general hullaballoo.

What would the children say? Well, they could not preach, either of them: there was that consolation. The boy, at the beginning of the war, and without saying a word to either of them, had thrown up everything, had gone out as a common soldier—he had been so fearful they might try to stop