They came, when the path had run past a swelling of the bank, to the neck of a little valley that cleft the escarpment and ran obliquely inland for half a mile or so.  The further slope was defaced by a geometric planting of fruit-trees, and ranged in such stiff lines, and even from that distance so evidently sickly, that they looked like orphan fruit-trees that were being brought up in a Poor Law orchard.  Among them stood two or three raw-boned bungalows painted those colours which are liked by plumbers.  But the floor of the valley was an osier-bed, and the burst of sunshine had set alight the coarse orange hair of the young plants.

“Oh, they are lovely!” cried Ellen; “but yon hillside is just an insult to them.”

Marion replied, walking slowly and keeping her eye on the osiers with a look that was at once appreciative and furtive, as if she was afraid of letting the world know that she liked certain things in case it should go and defile them, that it was the Labour Colony of the Hallelujah Army, and that they had bought nearly all the land round Roothing and made it squalid with tin huts.

“But don’t they do a lot of good?” asked Ellen, who hated people to laugh at any movement whose followers had stood up in the streets and had things thrown at them.

It was evident that Marion considered the question crude.  “They even own Roothing Castle, which is where we’re going now, and at the entrance to it they’ve put up a notice, ’Visitors are requested to assist the Hallelujah Army in keeping the Castle select.’ ...  Intolerable people....”

“All the same,” said Ellen sturdily, “they may do good.”

But to that Marion replied, grumblingly and indistinctly, that style was the only test of value, and that the fools who put up that notice could never do any good to anybody, and then her eyes roved to the path that ran down the green shoulder of the escarpment on the other side of the valley’s neck.  “Ah, here’s Mrs. Winter.  Ellen, you are going to come in contact with the social life of Roothing.  This is the vicar’s wife.”

“Is she our sort of pairson?” asked Ellen doubtfully.

“For the purpose of social intercourse we pretend that she is,” answered Marion without enthusiasm.

They met her on the plank bridge that crossed the stream by which the osier beds were nourished, and Ellen liked her before they had come within hailing distance because she was such a little nosegay of an old lady.  Though her colours were those of age they were bright as flowers.  Her hair was white, but it shone like travellers’ joy, and her peering old eyes were blue as speedwell, and her shrivelled cheeks were pink as apple-blossom.  She bobbed when she walked like a ripe apple on its stem, and her voice when she called out to them was such a happy fluting as might come from some bird with a safe nest.  “Why, it’s Mrs. Yaverland.  I heard that you’d gone up to town.”