"You two poor sillies," she said, "what a heavy burden you have shouldered."
"I don't feel the weight of it," he said.
Lotta gazed full at him. He met her eyes, searching him.
"Are you going back to your stables?" she asked.
"Would you like to take it down to the country? There's a west wind blowing over my hills, and winter is coming in."
Like children, René and Cathleen gazed at each other in surprised delight.
Days, that in spite Of darkness, by the light Of a clear mind are day all night
NORTHWEST of London there are hills, where the air is eager and the upper winds are caught in woods as they come cloud-bearing from the wild sky. Often the winds fling clouds about the hills and leave them entangled in the woods. Such a cloud they had left on the Saturday morning when Lotta Cleethorpe brought René and Cathleen to her retreat, an old white cottage on the border of a long common brown with dead heather, orange with wet withered bracken, olive-green with the gorse and the close-cropped grass under the gray mist. Out of this, as they drove from the station, loomed trees and haystacks and houses. A public-house and a church stood at the end of the common. Soon they passed a blacksmith's shop with the bellows in full blast, the sparks flying and the smith's huge arms and swart face lit up by the red glow. There came out the merry clink of hammers on the anvil, and then the hiss of the red-hot metal plunged into water.
"Modern life." And he found himself thinking of Kurt, who had just added to his laurels the first prize in a race to Berlin.
They reached Lotta's cottage. Apple-trees stood by the gate, a clipped box-tree by the door. A sheepdog came bounding along the road, cleared the gate, and pawed frantically at Lotta until she crouched and he could lay his forelegs on her shoulders and lick her face in a frenzied greeting.
"He lives at the public-house when I am not here, but he refuses to regard it as anything but lodgings. Down, Sammy! You know Cathleen. Say How do to Mr. Fourmy."
Sammy cocked his head, looked the other way, and lifted his paw. René shook it. The dog returned to his mistress, who said:
"I can't keep my hands off the garden. It has got into such a dreadful state. You two had better go for a walk. You'll find toadstools in the woods and there may be a few blackberries left."