I used to send
you expensive flowers, but times have changed." And he insisted on
returning to the brook, having seen, so he said, some forget-me-nots
among the sedges. And with these and some sprays of a little pink
flower, which he told her was the cuckoo-flower, they walked, telling
and asking each other the names of different wayside weeds till they
arrived at the cottage.
"There is my cottage."
And Owen saw, some twenty or thirty yards from the roadside, the
white gables of a cottage thrusting over against a space of blue sky.
Flights of swallows flew shrieking past, and the large elms on the
right threw out branches so invitingly that Owen thought of long
hours passed in the shade with books and music; but, despite these
shady elms, the cottage wore a severe air--a severe cottage it was,
if a cottage can be severe. Owen was glad Evelyn hadn't forgotten a
verandah.
"A verandah always suggests a Creole. But there is no Creole in you."
"You wouldn't have thought my cottage severe if you hadn't known that
I had come from a convent, Owen. You like it, all the same."
Owen fell to praising the cottage which he didn't like.
"On one thing I did insist--that the hall was to be the principal
room.
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