The parlour, brick-floored, with bare table and shiny chairs and sofa
stuffed with horsehair, seemed never to have been used, it was so
terribly clean. Ashurst sat down at once on the sofa, holding his lame
knee between his hands, and Mrs. Narracombe gazed at him. He was the
only son of a late professor of chemistry, but people found a certain
lordliness in one who was often so sublimely unconscious of them.
"Is there a stream where we could bathe?"
"There's the strame at the bottom of the orchard, but sittin' down
you'll not be covered!"
"How deep?"
"Well, 'tis about a foot and a half, maybe."
"Oh! That'll do fine. Which way?"
"Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, an' the pool's by
the big apple tree that stands by itself. There's trout there, if you
can tickle them."
"They're more likely to tickle us!"
Mrs. Narracombe smiled. "There'll be the tea ready when you come back."
The pool, formed by the damming of a rock, had a sandy bottom; and the
big apple tree, lowest in the orchard, grew so close that its boughs
almost overhung the water; it was in leaf, and all but in flower-its
crimson buds just bursting. There was not room for more than one at a
time in that narrow bath, and Ashurst waited his turn, rubbing his
knee and gazing at the wild meadow, all rocks and thorn trees and feld
flowers, with a grove of beeches beyond, raised up on a flat mound.
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