Margaret did not quite like this speech; she winced away from it more, from remembering former occasions on which he had tried to lead her into a discussion (in which he took the complimentary part) about her own character and ways of going on. She cut his speech rather short by saying:

‘It is natural for me to think of Helstone church, and the walk to it, rather than of driving up to a London church in the middle of a paved street.’

‘Tell me about Helstone. You have never described it to me. I should like to have some idea of the place you will be living in, when ninety-six Harley Street will be looking dingy and dirty, and dull, and shut up. Is Helstone a village, or a town, in the first place?’

‘Oh, only a hamlet; I don’t think I could call it a village at all. There is the church and a few houses near it on the green — cottages, rather — with roses growing all over them.’

‘And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas — make your picture complete,’ said he.

‘No,’ replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, ‘I am not making a picture. I am trying to describe Helstone as it really is. You should not have said that.’

‘I am penitent,’ he answered. ‘Only it really sounded like a village in a tale rather than in real life.’

‘And so it is,’ replied Margaret, eagerly. ‘All the other places in England that I have seen seem so hard and prosaic-looking, after the New Forest. Helstone is like a village in a poem — in one of Tennyson’s poems. But I won’t try and describe it any more. You would only laugh at me if I told you what I think of it — what it really is.’

(Editor：news)