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She reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Monsieur Profond! From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard these words: "I don't, Annette."
The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that the face was too vivid, too naked, not HIS daughter's at that moment. And he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.
On the following afternoon, just at the time when young Thornleigh went a-coortin', and elderly Thornleigh took off its boots and coat, or put a clean white handkerchief over its cap, the better to enjoy its Sabbath snooze in the ingle-nook, Ted Wharton cocked his hat over his eye, put a posy in his coat, and set off to call on Margaret Heptonstall.
The click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden. She reached the verandah, and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Profond! From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard these words!
My breath freezes, despite my pipe, as I peer from the door; and with a fortnight-old newspaper I retire to the ingle-nook. The friendliest thing I have seen to-day is the well-smoked ham suspended from my kitchen rafters. It was a gift from the farm of Tullin, with a load of peats, the day before the snow began to fall. I doubt if I have seen a cart since.
But the larks would be singing as they were to-day, and the hawthorn coming out, and the spring flowers abloom in Anne Hathaway's garden. She caught her breath as they went out of the sunshine into the dim interior of the cottage. This ingle-nook ... Shakespeare must have sat here on winter evenings and talked. Did he tell Anne Hathaway wonderful tales?
On the other side was the living-room, with its undulating floor of stamped earth and grateless hearthstone in the ingle, to the right and left of which were seats. Here in the ingle-nook the little boy would sit watching his aunts cooking the oaten cake on the griddle, over a fire of turf from the curragh and gorse from the hills, or the bubbling cooking-pot slung on the slowrie.
Opposite her was the ancient chimneypiece and ingle-nook, with no grate but two huge iron dogs, set five feet apart; and on them lay a birch log and root, the size of a man, with a dozen beech billets burning briskly and crackling underneath and aside it.
The dark red walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonné enamel, the artistic fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and harmonious whole.
And this is my daughter, Kate, who will share our anxiety to help you." And then I was proud of our Kate, Kate with the red hair and the milk-white face, the saucy eye and the shrewd tongue, Kate with the tradesman's head and the heart of gold. She shook madam warmly by the hand, and led her to my great arm-chair in the ingle-nook as to a throne that was hers of right.
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