I must have a talk with Annie in the orchard one day.  It would be just the background to show off her particular style of beauty.  I like to suit my scenery to the drama in hand.  Catherine would be quite out of place in an orchard, where she might stain her gown, or a harmless beetle or spider terrify her into fits.

There appears to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting to-morrow’s morning delivery.  I was ass enough to go over this afternoon, and of course found nothing.

As I passed the barn on my way in, my ear was saluted by much laughter and shouting.  I came upon Annie giving her little brothers a swing.  Both great doors of the barn were turned back upon the outside wall and the swing hanging by long ropes to the rafters, and holding two chubby urchins together on the seat, swung out now into the sunshine, now back into the gloom, while Annie stood and pushed merrily.  Three tiny calves, penned off in a loose box at one end of the building, stared over the low partition with soft, astonished eyes.  It was a charming little picture.

“There, Tim!  I can only give you six more!” cries Annie.  “I’ve got to go and make the puddings” (she said “puddens,” but what matter?).  Before she goes she pulls a handful of grass from the threshold and offers it to the calves.  While they tug it this way and that to get it from her hand, she endeavours to plant a kiss on the moist black muzzle of the smallest, but he promptly and ungallantly backs and the grass falls to the ground.  At the same moment the children discover me, and an awed silence succeeds to their chatter.  Not to embarrass them, I move off and fall a-musing as to whether Catherine could make a pudding to save her life?  It is pretty certain it would cost a man his to have to eat it; does not even her violin playing, to which she has given indubitable time and attention, set one’s teeth on edge to listen to?

Yet why this bitterness?  Let me erase Catherine and her deficiencies from my mind for ever.

April 10.—­Again no letter!  Very well!  I know what I will do.  I am almost certain I will do it.  But first I will go down to the beach and give it a couple of hours’ sober reflection.  No one shall say I acted hastily, ill-advisedly, or in pique.

I cross over to the cliff edge.  Here the gorse is aflame with blossom; the short dry grass is full of tiny insect life.  Various larks are singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each never sings the same arrangement twice!

I go down the precipitous coastguards’ stairs.  At every step it grows hotter.  Down on the beach it is very hot, but there is shade to be found among the boulders at the cliff’s base.  I sit down and stare along the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey-green waves as they break and slosh upon the stones.