“Oh, more than that!”

His impression was that Mary had made herself beautiful.  He looked back over his shoulder and laughed as he hurried on.

Up till now it hadn’t occurred to him that Mary could be beautiful.  But it didn’t puzzle him.  He knew how she had achieved that momentary effect.

He knew and he was to remember.  For the effect repeated itself.

As he came back Mary was standing in the path, holding the baby in her arms.  She was looking, she said, for Essy.  Would Essy be coming soon?

Rowcliffe did not answer all at once.  He stood contemplating the picture.  It wasn’t all Mary.  The baby did his part.  He had been “short-coated” that month, and his thighs, crushed and delicately creased, showed rose red against the white rose of Mary’s arm.  She leaned her head, brooding tenderly, to his, and his head (he was a dark baby) was dusk to her flame.

Rowcliffe smiled.  “Why?” he said.  “Do you want to get rid of him?”

As if unconsciously she pressed the child closer to her.  As if unconsciously she held his head against her breast.  And when his fingers worked there, in their way, she covered them with her hand.

“No,” she said.  “He’s a nice baby. (Aren’t you a nice baby?  There!) Essy’s unhappy because he’s going to have blue eyes and dark hair.  But I think they’re the prettiest, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Rowcliffe.

He was grave and curt.

And Mary remembered that that was what Gwenda had—­blue eyes and dark hair.

It was what Gwenda’s children might have had, too.  She felt that she had made him think of Gwenda.

Then Essy came and took the baby from her.

“’E’s too ‘eavy fer yo’, Miss,” she said.  She laughed as she took him; she gazed at him with pride and affection unabashed.  His one fault, for Essy, was that, though he had got Greatorex’s eyes, he had not got Greatorex’s hair.

Mary and Rowcliffe went back together.

“You’re coming in to tea, aren’t you?” she said.

“Rather.”  He had got into the habit again of looking in at the Vicarage for tea every Wednesday.  They were having tea in the orchard now.  And in June the Vicarage orchard was a pleasanter place than the surgery.

It was in fact a very pleasant place.  Pleasanter than the gray and amber drawing-room.

When Rowcliffe came to think of it, he owed the Cartarets many pleasant things.  So he had formed another habit of asking them back to tea in his orchard.  He had had no idea what a pleasant place his orchard could be too.

Now, though Rowcliffe nearly always had tea alone with Mary at the Vicarage, Mary never came to tea at Rowcliffe’s house alone.  She always brought Alice with her.  And Rowcliffe found that a nuisance.  For one thing, Alice had the air of being dragged there against her will, so completely had she recovered from him.  For another, he couldn’t talk to Mary quite so well.  He didn’t know that he wanted to talk to Mary.  He didn’t know that he particularly wanted to be alone with her, but somehow Alice’s being there made him want it.