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She laughed her quick, light laugh. “So you’re going to spoil me?” she said.

They reached the pretty Mill House above the stream and found breakfast awaiting them in the oak-panelled parlour that overlooked a sunny orchard.

“How absolutely sweet!” said Doris.

He came and stood beside her at the window, looking silently forth.

She glanced at him half-shyly. “Aren’t you very fond of it all?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And I think I am going to be,” said Doris.

“I hope you will,” said Jeff.

She turned from him to Granny Grimshaw who entered at the moment with a hot dish.

“I don’t think we ought to have been married so early,” she said. “You must be quite tired out. Now, please, Mrs. Grimshaw, do sit down and let me wait on you for a change!”

Granny Grimshaw smiled at the bare suggestion.

“No, no, Mrs. Ironside, my dear. This is for you and Master Jeff. I’ve got mine in the kitchen.”

“I never heard such a thing!” declared Doris. “Jeff, surely you are not going to allow that!”

Jeff came from the window. “Of course you must join us, Granny,” he said.

But Granny Grimshaw was obdurate on that point. “My place is in the kitchen,” she said firmly. “And there I must bide. But I am ready to show you the way to your room, my dear, whenever you want to go.”

Doris bent forward impulsively and kissed her. “You are much, much too kind to me, you and Jeff,” she said.

But as soon as she was alone with Jeff her shyness returned. She could not feel as much at ease with him in the house as in the open air. She did not admit it even to herself, but deep in her heart she had begun to be a little afraid.

Till then she had gone blindly forward, taking in desperation the only course that seemed to offer her escape from a position that had become wholly intolerable. But now for the first time misgivings arose within her. She remembered how slight was her knowledge of the man to whom she had thus impetuously entrusted her future; and, remembering, something of her ready confidence went from her. She fell silent also.

“You are not eating anything,” said Jeff. She started at his voice and looked up.

“No, I’m not hungry,” she said. “I shall eat all the more presently when we get out into the open.”

He said no more, but finished his own breakfast with businesslike promptitude.

“Mrs. Grimshaw will take you upstairs,” he said then, and went to the door to call her.

“Where will you be?” Doris asked him shyly, as he stood back for her to pass.

“I am going round to the stable,” he said.

“May I come to you there?” she suggested.

He assented gravely: “Do!”

Granny Grimshaw was in her most garrulous mood. She took Doris up the old steep stairs and into the low-ceiled room with the lattice window that looked over the river meadows.

“It’s the best room in the house,” she told her. “Master Jeff was born in it, and he’s slept here for the past ten years. You won’t be lonely, my dear. My room is just across the passage, and he has gone to the room at the end which he always had as a boy.”

“This is a lovely room,” said Doris.

She stood where Jeff had stood before the open window and looked across the valley.

“I hope you will be very happy here, my dear,” said Granny Grimshaw behind her.

Doris turned round to her impetuously. “Dear Mrs. Grimshaw, I don’t like Jeff to give up the best room to me,” she said. “Isn’t there another one that I could have?”

She glanced towards a door that led out of the room in which they were.

“Yes, go in, my dear!” said Granny Grimshaw with a chuckle. “It’s all for you.”

Doris opened the door with a quick flush on her cheeks.

“Master Jeff thought you would like a little sitting-room of your own,” said the old woman behind her.