'Clara,' she said, 'what made you so silent to-night at Mazzini's?'
Clara did not reply, but after a pause of a minute or two, she asked
Mrs Caffyn whether it would not be possible for them all to go into
the country on Whitmonday? Whitsuntide was late; it would be warm,
and they could take their food with them and eat it out of doors.
'Just the very thing, my dear, if we could get anything cheap to take
us; the baby, of course, must go with us.
'I should like above everything to go to Great Oakhurst.'
'What, five of us--twenty miles there and twenty miles back!
Besides, although I love the place, it isn't exactly what one would
go to see just for a day. No! Letherhead or Mickleham or Darkin
would be ever so much better. They are too far, though, and, then,
that man Baruch must go with us. He'd be company for Marshall, and
he sticks up in Clerkenwell and never goes nowhere. You remember as
Marshall said as he must ask him the next time we had an outing.'
Clara had not forgotten it.
'Ah,' continued Mrs Caffyn, 'I should just love to show you
Mickleham.' Mrs Caffyn's heart yearned after her Surrey land. The man who is
born in a town does not know what it is to be haunted through life by
lovely visions of the landscape which lay about him when he was
young. The village youth leaves the home of his childhood for the
city, but the river doubling on itself, the overhanging alders and
willows, the fringe of level meadow, the chalk hills bounding the
river valley and rising against the sky, with here and there on their
summits solitary clusters of beech, the light and peace of the
different seasons, of morning, afternoon and evening, never forsake
him. To think of them is not a mere luxury; their presence modifies
the whole of his life.
'I don't see how it is to be managed,' she mused; 'and yet there's
nothing near London as I'd give two pins to see. There's Richmond as
we went to one Sunday; it was no better, to my way of thinking, than
looking at a picture. I'd ever so much sooner be a-walking across
the turnips by the footpath from Darkin home.'
'Couldn't we, for once in a way, stay somewhere over-night?' 'It might as well be two,' said Mrs Marshall; 'Saturday and Sunday.'
'Two,' said Madge; 'I vote for two.'
'Wait a bit, my dears, we're a precious awkward lot to fit in--
Marshall and his wife me and you and Miss Clara and the baby; and
then there's Baruch, who's odd man, so to speak; that's three
bedrooms. We sha'n't do it--Otherwise, I was a-thinking--'