Page 443 - sons-and-lovers

He got to the cottage at about eleven o’clock. Miriam was
busy preparing dinner. She looked so perfectly in keeping
with the little kitchen, ruddy and busy. He kissed her and
sat down to watch. The room was small and cosy. The sofa
was covered all over with a sort of linen in squares of red and
pale blue, old, much washed, but pretty. There was a stuffed
owl in a case over a corner cupboard. The sunlight came
through the leaves of the scented geraniums in the window.
She was cooking a chicken in his honour. It was their cot-
tage for the day, and they were man and wife. He beat the
eggs for her and peeled the potatoes. He thought she gave a
feeling of home almost like his mother; and no one could
look more beautiful, with her tumbled curls, when she was
flushed from the fire.
The dinner was a great success. Like a young husband,
he carved. They talked all the time with unflagging zest.
Then he wiped the dishes she had washed, and they went
out down the fields. There was a bright little brook that
ran into a bog at the foot of a very steep bank. Here they
wandered, picking still a few marsh-marigolds and many
big blue forget-me-nots. Then she sat on the bank with her
hands full of flowers, mostly golden water-blobs. As she put
her face down into the marigolds, it was all overcast with a
yellow shine.
‘Your face is bright,’ he said, ‘like a transfiguration.’
She looked at him, questioning. He laughed pleadingly
to her, laying his hands on hers. Then he kissed her fingers,
then her face.
The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still, yet

Sons and Lovers