"Darling, you used to say Colin was your favourite."

"No, my dear. Never. Never. It was always Jerrold. Ever since he was
born. He never cried when he was a baby. Colin was always crying."

"Poor Col-Col."

"There you are. Nobody'll ever say, 'Poor Jerrold'. I like happy people,
Anne. In this tiresome world it's people's duty to be happy."

"If it was, would they be? Don't look at me as if I wasn't."

"I wasn't thinking of you, ducky... You might tell Pinkney to take _all_
those tea-things off the terrace and put them _back_ into the lounge."


ii

The beech-trees stood in a half ring at the top of the highest field.
Jerrold had come back. He and Anne sat in the bay of the beeches,
looking out over the hills.

Curve after curve of many-coloured hills, rolling together, flung off
from each other, an endless undulation. Rounded heads carrying a clump
of trees like a comb; long steep groins packed with tree-tops; raking
necks hog-maned with stiff plantations. Slopes that spread out fan-wise,
opened wide wings. An immense stretching and flattening of arcs up to
the straight blue wall on the horizon. A band of trees stood up there
like a hedge.