a voice.  Anne opened the door many times and looked out to see always the same grey sheet before her.  The gutter on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water lying green between the cobble-stones of the path.  Nothing could be done in the garden.  The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow’s market.  The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.

“This is more important than the pony,” Anne said to herself, putting on her market-cloak and drawing on with difficulty her elastic-sided boots.  She fastened her skirt high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella.  Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house.  The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire.  She drew out the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went out into the rain.  She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon.  Then she was outside in the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones.  As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were few workers in the fields, and none who could help it out of doors.

It was a walk of five miles which was before her, and soon the sinking of heart with which she had set out, began to disappear before the necessity of setting one foot before the other in a steady walk.  The irritating pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her thoughts.  It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed the Ashley high road.  There were fewer houses.  The farms were larger, and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut.  But there was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain.  She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about a quarter of a mile on the high road which led to Marwell, the new red brick house with stucco ornaments, built by the horse-breeder, Burton.  She went towards it with lagging feet.

It was a prosperous and vulgar building, with a beautiful garden, for his garden was Burton’s pride.  Even in the sodden wet the flowers, not wholly beaten down, showed how well cared for and excellent their quality.  The sward was even and trim, and the fruit-trees on the side of the house had yielded prizes to their owner.  The path to the door was of new red tiles, and two large red pots held standard rose trees on either side of the stained-glass entrance.  Anne rang the new bell which clanged loudly and followed