’No, I feel too excited to take tea yet.  I’m like a child with a new baby-house.  Walking in the air will do me good.’

So she set out.  Holly Mount was about a mile from that outskirt of Paddiford Common where Mrs. Linnet’s house stood nestled among its laburnums, lilacs, and syringas.  Janet’s way thither lay for a little while along the high-road, and then led her into a deep-rutted lane, which wound through a flat tract of meadow and pasture, while in front lay smoky Paddiford, and away to the left the mother-town of Milby.  There was no line of silvery willows marking the course of a stream—­no group of Scotch firs with their trunks reddening in the level sunbeams—­nothing to break the flowerless monotony of grass and hedgerow but an occasional oak or elm, and a few cows sprinkled here and there.  A very commonplace scene, indeed.  But what scene was ever commonplace in the descending sunlight, when colour has awakened from its noonday sleep, and the long shadows awe us like a disclosed presence?  Above all, what scene is commonplace to the eye that is filled with serene gladness, and brightens all things with its own joy?

And Janet just now was very happy.  As she walked along the rough lane with a buoyant step, a half smile of innocent, kindly triumph played about her mouth.  She was delighting beforehand in the anticipated success of her persuasive power, and for the time her painful anxiety about Mr. Tryan’s health was thrown into abeyance.  But she had not gone far along the lane before she heard the sound of a horse advancing at a walking pace behind her.  Without looking back, she turned aside to make way for it between the ruts, and did not notice that for a moment it had stopped, and had then come on with a slightly quickened pace.  In less than a minute she heard a well-known voice say, ‘Mrs. Dempster’; and, turning, saw Mr. Tryan close to her, holding his horse by the bridle.  It seemed very natural to her that he should be there.  Her mind was so full of his presence at that moment, that the actual sight of him was only like a more vivid thought, and she behaved, as we are apt to do when feeling obliges us to be genuine, with a total forgetfulness of polite forms.  She only looked at him with a slight deepening of the smile that was already on her face.  He said gently, ‘Take my arm’; and they walked on a little way in silence.

It was he who broke it.  ‘You are going to Paddiford, I suppose?’

The question recalled Janet to the consciousness that this was an unexpected opportunity for beginning her work of persuasion, and that she was stupidly neglecting it.

‘Yes,’ she said, ’I was going to Mrs. Linnet’s.  I knew Miss Linnet would like to hear that our friend Mrs. Pettifer is quite settled now in her new house.  She is as fond of Mrs. Pettifer as I am—­almost; I won’t admit that any one loves her quite as well, for no one else has such good reason as I have.  But now the dear woman wants a lodger, for you know she can’t afford to live in so large a house by herself.  But I knew when I persuaded her to go there that she would be sure to get one—­she’s such a comfortable creature to live with; and I didn’t like her to spend all the rest of her days up that dull passage, being at every one’s beck and call who wanted to make use of her.’