fro between the leaden statuettes--

pedes vestis defluxit ad imos
Et vera incessu patuit dea,

--and I noted almost at once that two or three butterflies ("red
admirals" they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight.
A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff
print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the
steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a
minute on the verge of the laurels, unobserved, considering the picture
they made, and the ruinous Jacobean house that formed its background.

Never was house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters,
cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains
ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over
the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand.
The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and
Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles,
like curtains. Grass choked the rain-pipes, and moss dappled the gravel
walk. In the border at my feet someone had attempted a clearance of the
weeds; and here lay his hoe, matted with bindweed and ring-streaked with
the silvery tracks of snails.

"Very well, Lobelia. We will be sensible house-maid and cook, and talk
of business. We came out, I believe, to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an
apple-pie"--

At this point happening to turn her head she caught sight of me, and
stopped with a slight, embarrassed laugh. I raised my hat.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but no strangers are admitted here."

"I beg your pardon"--I began; and with that, as I shifted my
walking-stick, my foolish ankle gave way, and plump I sat in the very
middle of the bindweed.

"You are ill?" She came quickly towards me, but halted a pace or two
off. "You look as if you were going to faint."

"I'll try not to," said I. "The fact is, I have just twisted my ankle
on the side of Skirrid, and I wished to be told the shortest way to the
station."

"I don't believe you can walk; and"--she hesitated a second, then went
on defiantly--"we have no carriage to take you."

"I should not think of putting you to any such trouble."

"Also, if you want to reach Aber, there is no train for the next two
hours. You must come in and rest."

"But really "--

"I am mistress here. I am Wilhelmina Van der Knoope."

Being by this time on my fee