Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

15. CHAPTER XV (continued)

"Well, Ralph," she said, "this is better than Lincoln's Inn Fields, isn't it? Look, there's a bird for you! Oh, you've brought glasses, have you? Edward and Christopher mean to make you shoot. Can you shoot? I shouldn't think so--"

"Look here, you must explain," said Ralph. "Who are these young men? Where am I staying?"

"You are staying with us, of course," she said boldly. "Of course, you're staying with us--you don't mind coming, do you?"

"If I had, I shouldn't have come," he said sturdily. They walked on in silence; Mary took care not to break it for a time. She wished Ralph to feel, as she thought he would, all the fresh delights of the earth and air. She was right. In a moment he expressed his pleasure, much to her comfort.

"This is the sort of country I thought you'd live in, Mary," he said, pushing his hat back on his head, and looking about him. "Real country. No gentlemen's seats."

He snuffed the air, and felt more keenly than he had done for many weeks the pleasure of owning a body.

"Now we have to find our way through a hedge," said Mary. In the gap of the hedge Ralph tore up a poacher's wire, set across a hole to trap a rabbit.

"It's quite right that they should poach," said Mary, watching him tugging at the wire. "I wonder whether it was Alfred Duggins or Sid Rankin? How can one expect them not to, when they only make fifteen shillings a week? Fifteen shillings a week," she repeated, coming out on the other side of the hedge, and running her fingers through her hair to rid herself of a bramble which had attached itself to her. "I could live on fifteen shillings a week--easily."

"Could you?" said Ralph. "I don't believe you could," he added.