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 all in the dark. You might have lighted up and made the place look a bit more festive. It's all very well to hear how big one's house is, but I'd like to see it with my own eyes."

"I'm sorry," said Cicely; "as a matter of fact I'd only just come in myself. I was out in the garden."

"Gardening?"

"No. Just poking about. You never heard anything like the way the thrushes sing. I never knew before they could sing like that. Or perhaps I'd never had time to listen. And the snowdrops are coming out all along the kitchen garden border. Oh, Herbert—"

"I shouldn't have thought that a house-move was exactly the most leisurely time to listen to thrushes. But of course!"

"But I had been working."

His injured dignity was impenetrable, like a barrier of steel. She turned aside from it with a shrug.

"Come in and see what I have done. The libraryJanet!" she called down a dark archway. "Janet, tea! The master's in."

Down the far end of the long room was