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Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant
spoke, and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify
his presence there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots
that he did not want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted
mood, in which the auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the
natural sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of snow descended,
at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent
winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human
invasion, came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were
being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face, while waiting
for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a little
behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail
downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would
choose her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which
took up so much of his attention that his biddings proceeded
incoherently; and when the auctioneer said, every now and then,
with a nod towards him, "Yours, Mr.


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