Carpeting

He set off down the bank, and she went unwillingly with him. Yet she
would not have stayed away, either.

'We know each other well, you and I, already,' he said. She did not
answer.

In the large darkish kitchen of the mill, the labourer's wife was
talking shrilly to Hermione and Gerald, who stood, he in white and she
in a glistening bluish foulard, strangely luminous in the dusk of the
room; whilst from the cages on the walls, a dozen or more canaries sang
at the top of their voices. The cages were all placed round a small
square window at the back, where the sunshine came in, a beautiful
beam, filtering through green leaves of a tree. The voice of Mrs Salmon
shrilled against the noise of the birds, which rose ever more wild and
triumphant, and the woman's voice went up and up against them, and the
birds replied with wild animation.

'Here's Rupert!' shouted Gerald in the midst of the din. He was
suffering badly, being very sensitive in the ear.

'O-o-h them birds, they won't let you speak--!' shrilled the labourer's
wife in disgust. 'I'll cover them up.' And she darted here and there, throwing a duster, an apron, a towel, a
table-cloth over the cages of the birds.

'Now will you stop it, and let a body speak for your row,' she said,
still in a voice that was too high.