“Oh, I don’t mean to be conceited.”
“No, no, I understand.”
With her lunch and her ale and George Moore’s Esther Waters tied up in a package, Valerie set off a little after ten o’clock. She had on a plain serge dress and a cloth hat, and carried a hooked stick. Beyond the station she had the world to herself, and as she walked she whistled and whisked the heads off the monkey grass. She went by the point she had discovered the night before, and a mile further on found herself climbing into hills. Presently she stopped at the top of a low range to look down upon an old house buried in trees on a point below her.
“Oh, how lovely,” she said under her breath, with a quick lifting of her spirits, as if she had just caught a glimpse of the sea at the end of a long valley.
She could see only the red roof and two brick chimneys, from one of which a column of smoke rose lazily in the warm air. By the size of the pines and poplars that mingled with the native bush to make a wall about it she gathered that it had been built by an early settler. Anyway it had a charming old-world air like that of some deserted mission station. Removed from the house a little she saw patches of colour and fresh light greens that looked like vegetables, and across the road she saw in a clearing a cow and a horse.
She walked slowly down the dusty slope, breathing in the cool of the heavy bush on either side, till she came to an old post and rail fence buried in great geranium bushes and old briars and moss roses, that honeyed the air with the sweetness of their leaves. Convolvulus crept about everywhere, and stretches of periwinkle formed a carpet back into the trees. But she could see no sign of the house. It was barricaded from view many times over by shrubs and bush and pines. Set back in the hedge
