Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/144

132 warm green lights and shadows—and thrushes sing like mad. That's home!"

He looked at her.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."

"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges, dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy—and the grey wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work—and the fire—and the smell of apples from the loft."

"Yes," he said, "that's it—I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot o' words to talk with."

When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of course, this pleased her very much.

Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on whom it was pleasant to smile, and