s a
gate at the end of the field, and that a little sluggish river, called
the Kennet, flowed along under the row of elms; a narrow footway crossed
this, and led directly through the churchyard into the village, or if
you liked to turn to the left, it brought you at last into the high-road
at the back of Truslow Manor. In dark evenings this way into the
village was not without its perils, for an unwary traveller might easily
step over the edge of the path as he crossed the river and find himself
in its muddy bed.

Biddy soon knew this way to church very well; and amongst the many
strange customs at Wavebury, she thought it curious that there should be
two services every day, though the congregation was seldom more than two
or three in number.

"Whenever you like to go to church, Biddy," said her mistress, "I will
always take the baby."

So Biddy went sometimes, though she never ceased to wonder why the
prayers should be read when there was scarcely anyone to listen to them.
Once, indeed, there were only herself and Mr Roy in the church, and as
they walked home together after the service she felt obliged to
apologise.

"Please, sir," she said, hurriedly drooping one knee as she walked, "I'm
sorry you had to read all them long prayers jest for me."

Whereupon Mr Roy tried to make her understand why he should still have
read them, whether she had been there or not. Biddy did not feel very
clear about it at the end of the explanation, though she was conscious
that he "talked very kind," and she fell back on the thought that after
all it was the country, and quite different from London.

But this difference was "borne in upon her" most strongly of all when
she went for the first time to the downs which closely surrounded
Wavebury. Passing up the long straggling village with its thatched
cottages, she came suddenly on them stretching away in the distance,
pathless, and, as far as she could see, endless. Then she stood
bewildered. Such lots of space everywhere; so much sky over her head;
such a great green carpet under her feet, spread over the gentle rising
and falling of the hills. All green, except for the scattered flocks of
sheep, and the cairns of grey stones, and the groups of stunted thorn
trees, bent and twisted and worried by the wind into a thousand odd
shapes.

Looking back towards the village, where part of the land had been
cultivated, she could see the oxen ploughing, their horned heads clearly
o