“Three miles along the road and two to the right.  You can see the works from our windows.”

“Of course you could,” said Ellen sourly; and explained, “When I couldn’t see the works I made up a sort of story for myself, about the works being new ones, and the firm not being able to get them finished in time for Richard to start work, so that we had him hanging about the house all to ourselves.  That was silly.  Of course.  But I am silly about him.  I suppose I will soon get over it.”

“I will hate you if you do,” answered Marion, “for I never have.”

The island and its creek fell away to the south.  The train ran now across the marshes, flat and green, chequered with dykes, confined to the right by the steep brim of a sea-wall.  To the left a line of little hills gained height.  They fell back in an amphitheatre, and a farmhouse turned to the sun a garden more austere with the salt air than farmhouse gardens commonly are, and behind it, in the shelter of the curved green escarpment, some tall trees stood among the pastures.  The hills rose again to an overhanging steepness and broke down to a gap full of the purples of bare woods, before which stood the cathedralesque ruins of a brick-kiln, with its tall tower and apse-like ovens, on a green platform of levelled ground scored with the red of rusted trolley-lines.  The hill grew higher and stood sheer like a turfed cliff, and was surmounted by four tall towers of grey stone.  It would have been impressive if the fall of the cliff had not been disfigured by a large shed of pink corrugated iron with “Hallelujah Army” painted on its roof, which was built on a shelf where some hawthorn trees and bramble bushes found a footing.

Then for a time, after an oblique valley had cleft the range, an elm-hedge ran along the crest, till there looked down a grey church with a squinting spire and grey-black yews set about it, and something white like a monument standing up on a mound beside it.  Woods appeared and receded, leaving the hilltop bare, and returned; there was a broken hedge of hawthorn; a downward line of trees scored the gentler slope of the escarpment, and from a square red brick house on the skyline there fell an orchard.

“That is our house up there.  That is Yaverland’s End,” said Marion; “and look on the other window, that is Roothing Harbour.”  But all Ellen could see was a forest of slim straight poles leaning everywhere above the sea-wall.  “Those are the masts of the fishing-boats,” said Marion indifferently, even grumbling, as was her way when she spoke of the things she loved.  “Don’t laugh at this place, though it is all mud.  I can tell you the Elizabethan adventures drew most of their seamen from here and Tilbury.”  The sea-wall stopped, and beyond a foreshore of coal-dust and soiled shingle and tarred huts, such as is found always where men go down to the sea in ships, lay a bare harbour basin in which fishing-boats lolled on their sides in silver mud.  Further out, smaller boats lay tidily on a bar of coarse grass that ran out from a sea-walled island that lay alongside the marsh the train had just crossed, with a farm and its orchard lying at the end it thrust into the harbour.