It was the first hint that she had given of a wistful sense of exile, the yearning for other skies, the message that a dead bird’s plumage could bring across rolling seas and scorching plains.

“And the education of your boys, how do you manage for that?” asked the visitor.

“There is a young tutor living out in these wilds,” said Mrs. Kerrick; “he was assistant master at a private school in Scotland, but it had to be given up when—­when things changed; so many of the boys left the country.  He came out to an uncle who has a small estate eight miles from here, and three days in the week he rides over to teach my boys, and three days he goes to another family living in the opposite direction.  To-day he is due to come here.  It is a great boon to have such an opportunity for getting the boys educated, and of course it helps him to earn a living.”

“And the society of the place?” asked the Frenchman.

His hostess laughed.

“I must admit it has to be looked for with a strong pair of field-glasses,” she said; “it is almost as difficult to get a good bridge four together as it would have been to get up a tennis tournament or a subscription dance in our particular corner of England.  One has to ignore distances and forget fatigue if one wants to be gregarious even on a limited scale.  There are one or two officials who are our chief social mainstays, but the difficulty is to muster the few available souls under the same roof at the same moment.  A road will be impassable in one quarter, a pony will be lame in another, a stress of work will prevent some one else from coming, and another may be down with a touch of fever.  When my little girl gave a birthday party here her only little girl guest had come twelve miles to attend it.  The Forest officer happened to drop in on us that evening, so we felt quite festive.”

The Frenchman’s eyes grew round in wonder.  He had once thought that the capital city of a Balkan kingdom was the uttermost limit of social desolation, viewed from a Parisian standpoint, and there at any rate one could get cafe chantant, tennis, picnic parties, an occasional theatre performance by a foreign troupe, now and then a travelling circus, not to speak of Court and diplomatic functions of a more or less sociable character.  Here, it seemed, one went a day’s journey to reach an evening’s entertainment, and the chance arrival of a tired official took on the nature of a festivity.  He looked round again at the rolling stretches of brown hills; before he had regarded them merely as the background to this little shut-away world, now he saw that they were foreground as well.  They were everything, there was nothing else.  And again his glance travelled to the face of his hostess, with its bright, pleasant eyes and smiling mouth.

“And you live here with your children,” he said, “here in this wilderness?  You leave England, you leave everything, for this?”