The dairy was a pleasant place; it was a long low stone room, with two doors opening on the green yard.

The roof of it was shaded by a tree planted for that purpose, and not many feet from its end wall the cool blue river ran.

A queen could not have had a sweeter place for an audience chamber, albeit there was need of paint and repairs, and the wooden doorstep was almost worn away.
Sophia, churn-handle in hand, greeted her visitor without apology.

She had expected that this churn-handle, the evidence of work to be done, would act as a check upon feeling, but she saw with little more than a glance that such check was superfluous; there was no sign of intoxication from the wine of graciousness which she had held to his lips when last she saw him.

As he talked to her he stood on the short white clover outside the door's decaying lintel.