Wanting some tobacco, he saw a good reason for going into Orton.  Esther had told him he could get tobacco and everything else at her aunt’s.  He found the post-office to be one of the first houses in the widely spaced village street.  In front of the cottage was a small garden ablaze with old-fashioned flowers; and in a large garden at one side were apple-trees, raspberry and currant bushes, and six thatched beehives on a bench.  The bowed windows of the little shop were partly screened by sunblinds; nevertheless the lower panes still displayed a heterogeneous collection of goods—­lemons, hanks of yarn, white linen buttons upon blue cards, sugar cones, churchwarden pipes, and tobacco jars.  A letter-box opened its narrow mouth low down in one wall, and over the door swung the sign, ‘Stamps and money-order office’, in black letters on white enamelled iron.

The interior of the shop was cool and dark.  A second glass-door at the back permitted Willoughby to see into a small sitting-room, and out again through a low and square-paned window to the sunny landscape beyond.  Silhouetted against the light were the heads of two women; the rough young head of yesterday’s Esther, the lean outline and bugled cap of Esther’s aunt.

It was the latter who at the jingling of the doorbell rose from her work and came forward to serve the customer; but the girl, with much mute meaning in her eyes, and a finger laid upon her smiling mouth, followed behind.  Her aunt heard her footfall.  ‘What do you want here, Esther?’ she said with thin disapproval; ‘get back to your sewing.’

Esther gave the young man a signal seen only by him and slipped out into the side-garden, where he found her when his purchases were made.  She leaned over the privet-hedge to intercept him as he passed.

‘Aunt’s an awful ole maid,’ she remarked apologetically; ’I b’lieve she’d never let me say a word to enny one if she could help it.’

‘So you got home all right last night?’ Willoughby inquired; ’what did your aunt say to you?’

‘Oh, she arst me where I’d been, and I tolder a lotter lies.’  Then, with a woman’s intuition, perceiving that this speech jarred, Esther made haste to add, ’She’s so dreadful hard on me.  I dursn’t tell her I’d been with a gentleman or she’d never have let me out alone again.’

’And at present I suppose you’ll be found somewhere about that same stile every evening?’ said Willoughby foolishly, for he really did not much care whether he met her again or not.  Now he was actually in her company, he was surprised at himself for having given her a whole morning’s thought; yet the eagerness of her answer flattered him, too.

’Tonight I can’t come, worse luck!  It’s Thursday, and the shops here close of a Thursday at five.  I’ll havter keep aunt company.  But tomorrer?  I can be there tomorrer.  You’ll come, say?’

‘Esther!’ cried a vexed voice, and the precise, right-minded aunt emerged through a row of raspberry-bushes; ’whatever are you thinking about, delayin’ the gentleman in this fashion?’ She was full of rustic and official civility for ‘the gentleman’, but indignant with her niece.  ‘I don’t want none of your London manners down here,’ Willoughby heard her say as she marched the girl off.