[Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy]@TWC D-Link bookWessex Tales CHAPTER VII 7/7
He would like you to look it over.' The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them down the harbour-road as usual.
Barnet had been glad to get those words of thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would like her to know of his share in finding her a home such as it was; and what he could not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for him.
He returned to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though in reason he hardly knew why his tread should be light. On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast altar- tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting, it was to be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by the architect; a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no useless elaboration at all.
Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe had come to reason of his own accord; and he returned the drawing with a note of approval. He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and down the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the bulging green hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he murmured words and fragments of words, which, if listened to, would have revealed all the secrets of his existence.
Whatever his reason in going there, Lucy did not call again: the walk to the shore seemed to be abandoned: he must have thought it as well for both that it should be so, for he did not go anywhere out of his accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her..
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