With thought and action as elastic as theirs, the young mistress of Chickaree prepared for her visit to the poor woman; afraid neither of the hot sunbeams nor of certain white undulations of cloud that just broke the line of the western horizon.  Mr. Falkirk had walked down to his cottage; there was no one to counsel or hinder.  And over the horses there was small consultation needed; the only two nags found being a young vixen of a black colt, and an intensely sedate horse of no particular colour which Mrs. Bywank was accustomed to drive to church.  Relinquishing this respectable creature to Dingee, Wych Hazel perched herself upon Vixen and set forth; walking the colt now to keep by her little guide, but promising herself a good trot on the way home.

The child had come to show her the way, and went in a shuffling amble by the side of the colt’s black legs.  For a good while they kept the road which had been travelled yesterday; at last turned off to another which presently became pleasantly shady.  Woods closed it in, made it rather lonely in fact, but nobody thought now of anything but the grateful change.  There were clouds which might hide the sun by and by, but just now he was powerful and they were only lifting their white heads stealthily in the west.  At a rough stile, beyond which a foot track led deeper into the wood, the girl stopped.

‘It’s in here,’ she said.

It was very clear that Vixen could not cross the stile.  So her young rider dismounted and looping up the heavy folds of her riding skirt as best she might, disappeared from the eyes of Dingee among the trees.  Her dress was a pretty enough dress after all, for though the skirts were dark and heavy, the white dimity jacket was all airiness and ruffles; and once fairly in the shade of the trees, Wych Hazel let her riding hat fall back and rest on her shoulders in very childish fashion indeed.  Her little guide trotted on before her; till they saw the house they had come for.

It was a place of shiftless poverty; of need, no doubt, but not of industry; Wych Hazel was humbly begged to supply deficiencies which ought not to have been.  Inexperienced as she was, she scarcely understood it.  Nevertheless she was glad when the visit was over and she could step out of the door again.  The clouds had not hid the sun yet, and she went lightly on through the trees, singing to herself according to custom, till she was near the stile; then she was ‘ware’ of somebody approaching and the singing ceased.  The glance which showed her a stranger revealed also what made her glance again as they drew nearer; it was a person of uncommonly good exterior and fine bearing.  A third glance would not have been given, but that, as they came close, Wych Hazel received the homage of a very profound and courteous salutation, and the gentleman, presenting a branch of white roses, said with sufficient deference,

‘Earth, must offer tribute!—­and cannot, without hands—­’