Creeper Cottage, it will be remembered, consisted of two cottages, each with two rooms, an attic, and a kitchen, and in the back yard the further accommodation of a coal-hole, a pig-stye, and a pump.  Thanks to Tussie’s efforts more furniture had been got from Minehead.  Tussie had gone in himself, after a skilful questioning of Fritzing had made him realize how little had been ordered, and had, with Fritzing’s permission, put the whole thing into the hands of a Minehead firm.  Thus there was a bed for Annalise and sheets for everybody, and the place was as decent as it could be made in the time.  It was so tiny that it got done, after a great deal of urging from Tussie, by the Tuesday at midday, and Tussie himself had superintended the storing of wood in the coal-hole and the lighting of the fire that was to warm his divine lady and that Ill Luck found so comforting to her toes.  The Shuttleworth horses had a busy time on the Friday, Saturday, and Monday, trotting up and down between Symford and Minehead; and the Shuttleworth servants and tenants, not being more blind than other people, saw very well that their Augustus had lost his heart to the lady from nowhere.  As for Lady Shuttleworth, she only smiled a rueful smile and stroked her poor Tussie’s hair in silence when, having murmured something about the horses being tired, he reproved her by telling her that it was everybody’s duty to do what they could for strangers in difficulties.

Priscilla’s side of Creeper Cottage was the end abutting on the churchyard, and her parlour had one latticed window looking south down the village street, and one looking west opening directly on to the churchyard.  The long grass of the churchyard, its dandelions and daisies, grew right up beneath this window to her wall, and a tall tombstone half-blocked her view of the elm-trees and the church.  Over this room, with the same romantic and gloomy outlook, was her bedroom.  Behind her parlour was what had been the shoemaker’s kitchen, but it had been turned into a temporary bathroom.  True no water was laid on as yet, but the pump was just outside, and nobody thought there would be any difficulty about filling the bath every morning by means of the pump combined with buckets.  Over the bathroom was the attic.  This was Annalise’s bedroom.  Nobody thought there would be any difficulty about that either; nobody, in fact, thought anything about anything.  It was a simple place, after the manner of attics, with a window in its sloping ceiling through which stars might be studied with great comfort as one lay in bed.  A frugal mind, an earnest soul, would have liked the attic, would have found a healthy enjoyment in a place so plain and fresh, so swept in windy weather by the airs of heaven.  A poet, too, would certainly have flooded any parts of it that seemed dark with the splendour of his own inner light; a nature-lover, again, would have quickly discovered the spiders that dwelt in its corners, and spent profitable