She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than
reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping
high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while
Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his
calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on
his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip
into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.
The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in
her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the
entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting
overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and
on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of
Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and
pear trees weighted down by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing
apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which
amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of
verdigris-green or lemon-yellow--first harbingers of autumn.
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