Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.
Old Jolyon walked and talked with Holly. At
first he felt taller and full of a new vigour; then
he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they
would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.
‘Well, she’s not there!’ he would
think, ‘of course not!’ And he would feel
a little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the
hill home, with his hand clapped to his left side.
Now and then the thought would move in him: ’Did
she come—or did I dream it?’ and
he would stare at space, while the dog Balthasar stared
at him. Of course she would not come again!
He opened the letters from Spain with less excitement.
They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he
screwed up his eyes and looked at where she had sat.
She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes again.
