Her father smiled and shook his head a little.

‘Perhaps,’ he said; and added a favourite phrase of his, ’while there is life there is hope.’

‘Of course there is,’ rejoined Emily, with gaiety which was unusual in her.  ’No smoke; the hills blue against a lovely sky! trees covered to the very roots with greenness; rich old English homes and cottages—­oh, you know the kind your ideal of a cottage—­low tiled roofs, latticed windows, moss and lichen and climbing flowers.  Farmyards sweet with hay, and gleaming dairies.  That country is my home!’

With how rich a poetry it clothed itself in her remembrance, the land of milk and honey, indeed, her heart’s home.  It was all but impossible to keep the secret of her joy, yet she had resolved to do so, and her purpose held firm.

‘I am very glad indeed that you are so happy there,’ sail her father, looking at her with that quiet absorption in another’s mood of which he was so capable.  ’But it will be London through the winter.  You haven’t told me much about London; but then you were there so short a time.’

’But I saw much.  Mrs. Rossall could not have been kinder; for the first few days it was almost as if I had been a visitor; I was taken everywhere.’

‘I should like to see London before I die,’ mused her father.  ’Somehow I have never managed to get so far.’

‘Oh, we will see it together some day.’

‘There’s one thing,’ said Mr. Hood, reflectively, ’that I wish especially to see, and that is Holborn Viaduct.  It must be a wonderful piece of engineering; I remember thinking it out at the time it was constructed.  Of course you have seen it?’

’I am afraid not.  We are very far away from the City.  But I will go and see it on the first opportunity.’

‘Do, and send me a full description.’

His thoughts reverted to the views before them.

’After all, this isn’t so bad.  There’s a great advantage in living so near the Heath.  I’m sure the air here is admirable; don’t you smell how fresh it is?  And then, one gets fond of the place one’s lived in for years.  I believe I should find it hard to leave Dunfield.’

Emily smiled gently.

‘I wonder,’ he pursued, ’whether you have the kind of feeling that came to me just then?  It struck me that, suppose anything happened that would enable us to go and live in another place, there would be a sort of ingratitude, something like a shabby action, in turning one’s back on the old spot.  I don’t like to feel unkind even to a town.’

The girl glanced at him with meaning eyes.  Here was an instance of the sympathetic relations of which she had spoken to Wilfrid; in these words was disclosed the origin of the deepest sensibilities of her own nature.