The feeling of An Habitation Enforced, as of all the English tales, is that of the traveller returned.  The value of Mr Kipling’s traffics and discoveries over the seven seas is less in the record he has made of these adventures than in their having enabled him to return to England with eyes sharpened by exile, with his senses alert for that fourth dimension which does not exist for the stranger. An Habitation Enforced is inspired by the nostalgia of inveterate banishment.  Some part of its perfection—­it is one of the few perfect short stories in the English tongue—­is due to the perfect agreement of its form with the passion that informs its writing.  It is the story of a homing Englishwoman, and of her restoration to the absolute earth of her forbears.  In writing of this woman Mr Kipling has only had to recall his own joyful adventure in picking up the threads of a life at once familiar and mysterious, in meeting again the homely miracle of things that never change.  Finally England claims her utterly—­her and her children and her American husband.  It was an American who bade Cloke, man of the soil and acquired retainer of the family, bring down larch-poles for a light bridge over the brook; but it was an Englishman reclaimed who needs consented to Cloke’s amendment: 

“’But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke?  I told you to have them down here ready.’

“’We’ll get ’em down if you, say so,’ Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.

“’But I did say so.  What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for?  We aren’t building a railway bridge.  Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.’

“‘I don’t know nothin’ about that,’ said Cloke.  ‘An’ I’ve nothin’ to say against larch—­if you want to make a temp’ry job of it.  I ain’t ‘ere to tell you what isn’t so, sir; an’ you can’t say I ever come creepin’ up on you, or tryin’ to lead you farther in than you set out——­’

“A year ago George would have danced with impatience.  Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.

“’All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp’ry job of it; and by the time the young master’s married it’ll have to be done again.  Now, I’ve brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we’ve ever drawed.  You put ’em in an’ it’s off your mind for good an’ all.  T’other way—­I don’t say it ain’t right, I’m only just sayin’ what I think—­but t’other way, he’ll no sooner be married than we’ll ’ave it all to do again.  You’ve no call to regard my words, but you can’t get out of that.’

“‘No,’ said George, after a pause; ’I’ve been realising that for some time.  Make it oak then; we can’t get out of it.’”