When Caterina reached the pretty arched wooden bridge which formed the only entrance to the Mosslands for any but webbed feet, the sun had mastered the clouds, and was shining through the boughs of the tall elms that made a deep nest for the gardener’s cottage—­turning the raindrops into diamonds, and inviting the nasturtium flowers creeping over the porch and low-thatched roof to lift up their flame-coloured heads once more.  The rooks were cawing with many-voiced monotony, apparently—­by a remarkable approximation to human intelligence—­finding great conversational resources in the change of weather.  The mossy turf, studded with the broad blades of marsh-loving plants, told that Mr. Bates’s nest was rather damp in the best of weather; but he was of opinion that a little external moisture would hurt no man who was not perversely neglectful of that obvious and providential antidote, rum-and-water.

Caterina loved this nest.  Every object in it, every sound that haunted it, had been familiar to her from the days when she had been carried thither on Mr. Bates’s arm, making little cawing noises to imitate the rooks, clapping her hands at the green frogs leaping in the moist grass, and fixing grave eyes on the gardener’s fowls cluck-clucking under their pens.  And now the spot looked prettier to her than ever; it was so out of the way of Miss Assher, with her brilliant beauty, and personal claims, and small civil remarks.  She thought Mr. Bates would not be come into his dinner yet, so she would sit down and wait for him.

But she was mistaken.  Mr. Bates was seated in his arm-chair, with his pocket-handkerchief thrown over his face, as the most eligible mode of passing away those superfluous hours between meals when the weather drives a man in-doors.  Roused by the furious barking of his chained bulldog, he descried his little favourite approaching, and forthwith presented himself at the doorway, looking disproportionately tall compared with the height of his cottage.  The bulldog, meanwhile, unbent from the severity of his official demeanour, and commenced a friendly interchange of ideas with Rupert.

Mr. Bates’s hair was now grey, but his frame was none the less stalwart, and his face looked all the redder, making an artistic contrast with the deep blue of his cotton neckerchief, and of his linen apron twisted into a girdle round his waist.

‘Why, dang my boottons, Miss Tiny,’ he exclaimed, ’hoo coom ye to coom oot dabblin’ your faet laike a little Muscovy duck, sich a day as this?  Not but what ai’m delaighted to sae ye.  Here Hesther,’ he called to his old humpbacked house-keeper, ‘tek the young ledy’s oombrella an’ spread it oot to dray.  Coom, coom in, Miss Tiny, an’ set ye doon by the faire an’ dray yer faet, an’ hev summat warm to kape ye from ketchin’ coold.’

Mr. Bates led the way, stooping under the doorplaces, into his small sitting-room, and, shaking the patchwork cushion in his arm-chair, moved it to within a good roasting distance of the blazing fire.