Except in church, and outside the porch for a formal word or two, Humility and Honoria had never met.  This was Honoria’s first visit to the Parsonage, and the sight of the clean kitchen and shining pots and pans filled her with wonder.  Humility shook hands and made a silent note of the child’s frock, which was torn and wanted brushing.

“He may go, and thank you.  It’s lonely for him here, very often.”

“I suppose,” said Honoria gravely, “I ought to have called before.  I wish—­” She was about to say that she wished Humility would come to Tredinnis.  But her eyes wandered to the orderly dresser and the scalding-pans by the fireplace.

“I mean—­if Taffy had a sister it would be different.”

Humility bent to lift a kettle off the fire.  When she faced round again, her eyes were smiling though her lip trembled a little.

“How bright you keep everything here!” said Honoria.

“There’s plenty of sand to scour with; it’s bad for the garden though.”

“Don’t you grow any flowers?”

“I planted a few pansies the first year; they came from my home up in Devonshire.  But the sand covered them.  It covers everything.”  She smiled, and asked suddenly, “May I kiss you?”

“Of course you may,” said Honoria.  But she blushed as Humility did it, and they both laughed shyly.

“Hullo!” cried Taffy from the foot of the stairs.  Honoria moved to the window.  She heard the boy and his mother laughing and making pretence to quarrel, while he chose the brownest of the hot cakes from the wood-ashes.  She stared out upon Humility’s buried pansies.  It was strange—­a minute back she had felt quite happy.

Humility set them off, and watched them till they disappeared in the first dip of the towans; and then sat down in the empty kitchen and wept a little before carrying up her mother’s breakfast.

Honoria rode in silence for the first mile; but Taffy sang and whistled by turns as he skipped alongside.  The whole world flashed and glittered around the boy and girl; the white gulls fishing, the swallows chasing one another across the dunes, the lighthouse on the distant spit, the white-washed mine-chimneys on the ridge beside the shore.  Away on the rises of the moor one hill-farm laughed to another in a steady flame of furze blossom—­laughed with a tinkling of singing larks.  And beyond the last rise lay the land of wonders, George’s country.  “Hark!” Honoria reined up.  “Isn’t that the cuckoo?” Taffy listened.  Yes, somewhere among the hillocks seaward its note was dinning.

“Count!”

     “Cuckoo, cherry-tree,
      Be a good bird and tell to me
      How many years before I die?”

“Ninety-six!” Taffy announced.

“Ninety-two,” said Honoria, “but we won’t quarrel about it.  Happy month to you!”

“Eh?”

“It is the first of May.  Come along; perhaps we shall meet the Mayers, though we’re too late, I expect.  Hullo! there’s a miner—­ let’s ask him.”