oss-country is the drive from Royston Railway Station to
Worsted Skeynes. To George Pendyce, driving the dog cart, with Helen
Bellew beside him, it seemed but a minute--that strange minute when the
heaven is opened and a vision shows between. To some men that vision
comes but once, to some men many times. It comes after long winter, when
the blossom hangs; it comes after parched summer, when the leaves are
going gold; and of what hues it is painted--of frost-white and fire, of
wine and purple, of mountain flowers, or the shadowy green of still deep
pools--the seer alone can tell. But this is certain--the vision steals
from him who looks on it all images of other things, all sense of law,
of order, of the living past, and the living present. It is the future,
fair-scented, singing, jewelled, as when suddenly between high banks a
bough of apple-blossom hangs quivering in the wind loud with the song of
bees.

George Pendyce gazed before him at this vision over the grey mare's
back, and she who sat beside him muffled in her fur was touching his arm
with hers. And back to them the second groom, hugging himself above the
road that slipped away beneath, saw another kind of vision, for he
had won five pounds, and his eyes were closed. And the grey mare saw a
vision of her warm light stall, and the oats dropping between her manger
bars, and fled with light hoofs along the lanes where the side-lamps
shot two moving gleams over dark beech-hedges that rustled crisply in
the northeast wind. Again and again she sneezed in the pleasure of that
homeward flight, and the light foam of her nostrils flicked the faces
of those behind. And they sat silent, thrilling at the touch of each
other's arms, their cheeks glowing in the windy darkness, their eyes
shining and fixed before them.

The second groom awoke suddenly from his dream.

"If I owned that 'orse, like Mr. George, and had such a topper as this
'ere Mrs. Bellew beside me, would I be sittin' there without a word?"

CHAPTER V

MRS. PENDYCE'S DANCE

Mrs. Pendyce believed in the practice of assembling county society for
the purpose of inducing it to dance, a hardy enterprise in a county
where the souls, and incidentally the feet, of the inhabitants were
shaped for more solid pursuits. Men were her chief difficulty, for in
spite of really national discouragement, it was rare to find a girl who
was not "fond of dancing."

"Ah, dancing; I did so love it! Oh, poor Cecil Tharp!