The country about Nuncombe Putney is perhaps as pretty as any in England.  It is beyond the river Teign, between that and Dartmoor, and is so lovely in all its variations of rivers, rivulets, broken ground, hills and dales, old broken, battered, time-worn timber, green knolls, rich pastures, and heathy common, that the wonder is that English lovers of scenery know so little of it.  At the Stag and Antlers old Mrs Crocket, than whom no old woman in the public line was ever more generous, more peppery, or more kind, kept two clean bed-rooms, and could cook a leg of Dartmoor mutton and make an apple pie against any woman in Devonshire.  ‘Drat your fish!’ she would say, when some self-indulgent and exacting traveller would wish for more than these accustomed viands.  ’Cock you up with dainties!  If you can’t eat your victuals without fish, you must go to Exeter.  And then you’ll get it stinking may-hap.’  Now Priscilla Stanbury and Mrs Crocket were great friends, and there had been times of deep want, in which Mrs Crocket’s friendship had been very serviceable to the ladies at the cottage.  The three young women had been to the inn one morning to ask after a conveyance from Nuncombe Putney to Princetown, and had found that a four-wheeled open carriage with an old horse and a very young driver could be hired there.  ‘We have never dreamed of such a thing,’ Priscilla Stanbury had said, ’and the only time I was at Prince-town I walked there and back.’  So they had called at the Stag and Antlers, and Mrs Crocket had told them her mind upon several matters.

‘What a dear old woman!’ said Nora, as they came away, having made their bargain for the open carriage.

‘I think she takes quite enough upon herself, you know,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

‘She is a dear old woman,’ said Priscilla, not attending at all to the last words that had been spoken.  ’She is one of the best friends I have in the world.  If I were to say the best out of my own family, perhaps I should not be wrong.’

‘But she uses such very odd language for a woman,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.  Now Mrs Crocket had certainly ‘dratted’ and ‘darned’ the boy, who wouldn’t come as fast as she had wished, and had laughed at Mrs Trevelyan very contemptuously, when that lady had suggested that the urchin, who was at last brought forth, might not be a safe charioteer down some of the hills.

‘I suppose I’m used to it,’ said Priscilla.  ’At any rate I know I like it.  And I like her.’

‘I dare say she’s a good sort of woman,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ‘only—­’

‘I am not saying anything about her being a good woman now,’ said Priscilla, interrupting the other with some vehemence, ’but only that she is my friend.’

‘I liked her of all things,’ said Nora.  ‘Has she lived here always?’