In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the wall and
ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their
presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to
welcome her.
The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some
shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in
rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to
most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of
towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all
round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But
that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her
father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles
without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig
round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who
particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation
to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then
returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in
themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated
Grace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and
fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose
hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was
surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and
progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,
mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved
in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who had
lived and died there.
No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family;
they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had
brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father's
eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an
anticlimax as this.
He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back
when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of
the timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was
saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision,
"nothing about me!" He looked also in the other direction, and saw
against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty's
cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that
humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers.