intolerable.  I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side.  Not a breath of air was stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud appeared.  If the vertical sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably.  Coming at length to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and asked for something to quench my thirst—­cider or milk.  There was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the woman of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest an hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen.  There are English counties where it would perhaps be said of such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the Devonians are a comely race.  In that blessed county the prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dew on them and sent away to supply the London flower-market.  Among the best-looking women of the peasant class there are two distinct types—­the rich in colour and the colourless.  A majority are perhaps intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found in any village or hamlet; and when seen side by side—­the lily and the rose, not to say the peony—­they offer a strange and beautiful contrast.

This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet.  The children were five or six in number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms—­all clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.

I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired the distance.

“Branscomb—­are you going there?  Oh, I wonder what you will think of Branscombe!” she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement.

What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and what did it matter what any stranger thought of it?

“But it is my home!” she answered, looking hurt at my careless words.  “I was born there, and married there, and have always lived at Branscombe with my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in this cottage.”

And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place!  That she had been to other villages and towns—­Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe —­not one that she liked half so well.  How strange that I had never been there—­had never even heard of it!  People that went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.