The strange houses fascinated her. They had the simplicity and the
precision of houses in a very old engraving. On the west side of the
Green they made a long straight wall. Morfe High Row. An open space of
cobblestones stretched in front of it. The market-place.
Sharp morning light picked out the small black panes of the windows in
the white criss-cross of their frames, and the long narrow signs of the
King's Head and the Farmer's Arms, black on grey. The plaster joints of
the walls and the dark net of earth between the cobbles showed thick and
clear as in a very old engraving. The west side had the sky behind it and
the east side had the hill.
Grey-white cart roads slanted across the Green, cutting it into vivid
triangular grass-plots. You went in and out of Morfe through the open
corners of its Green. Her father's house stood at the south-west corner,
by itself. A projecting wing at that end of the High Row screened it from
the market-place.
The strange houses excited her.
Wonderful, unknown people lived in them. You would see them and know what
they were like: the people in the tall house with the rusty stones, in
the bright green ivy house with the white doors, in the small grey,
humble houses, in the big, important house set at the top of the Green,
with the three long rows of windows, the front garden and the iron gate.
People you didn't know. You would be strange and exciting to them as they
were strange and exciting to you. They might say interesting things.
There might be somebody who cared about Plato and Spinoza.
Things would happen that you didn't know. Anything might happen any
minute.
If you knew what was happening in the houses _now_--some of them had
hard, frightening faces. Dreadful things might have happened in them. Her
father's house had a good, simple face. You could trust it.
Five windows in the rough grey wall, one on each side of the white door,
three above. A garden at the side, an orchard at the back. In front a
cobbled square marked off by a line of thin stones set in edgeways.
A strange house, innocent of unhappy memories.
Catty stood at the door, looking for her. She called to her to come in to
breakfast.