Читать книгу Fire in the Thatch - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 10

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When Colonel St Cyres went home, he left the keys of Little Thatch with his new tenant so that Vaughan could study the house at his leisure. Once alone in the place, Vaughan went carefully through the house, examining walls and windows, cupboards and floors. The more he studied it, the more he liked it. It was plain to any man who cared about old houses that this squat sturdy building could make a beautiful and comfortable home to anybody who cared for living and working in the country and who was not deterred by the lack of urban amenities. Having studied the house in detail, Vaughan went outside and put the door key in his pocket with an expression of serene content on his face. Then, taking off his old Burberry, with a grin of sheer delight, he took the fork and began to trench the ground in front of the cottage. The night’s frost was only a hoar frost—it had not penetrated the ground—and Vaughan found the soil light and workable beneath the matt of grass and weed. In the narrow beds beneath the cottage windows long-stemmed violets defied the frost, winter jasmine shone in sprays of clearest chrome yellow and aconites spread their green frills to the sun. Lighting his pipe, Vaughan began to plan out his garden: cold frames and some glass against the linhey, tomatoes on the long southward slope, potatoes and root crops in the lower beds. Some wattle fencing and fruit cages when he could get them—and all the apple trees needed pruning and spraying and banding. As he dug, he planned out his land, thought of the best way of investing his capital in it, pondering over pump and piping, electric plant and wiring, some heating for the greenhouse, and as he cogitated, his face was the face of a very contented man.