ven run along
the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and
making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from
the moor. She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind
which rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were
some giant she could not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air
blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good
for her whole thin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks and
brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it.

But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one
morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her
breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it
away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it
until her bowl was empty.

"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?" said
Martha.

"It tastes nice today," said Mary, feeling a little surprised her self.

"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach for tha'
victuals," answered Martha. "It's lucky for thee that tha's got
victuals as well as appetite. There's been twelve in our cottage as
had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out o'
doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you won't
be so yeller."

"I don't play," said Mary. "I have nothing to play with."

"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Martha. "Our children plays with
sticks and stones. They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at
things." Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was
nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and
wandered about the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked for Ben
Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him at work he was too
busy to look at her or was too surly. Once when she was walking toward
him he picked up his spade and turned away as if he did it on purpose.

One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk
outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare
flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew
thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green
leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time
that part had been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made
to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had