Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/139

Rh husband had slipped them in when he strapped her boxes.

"They're warm," he had said; "you may need them."

She had a rainbow-dyed neckerchief and a little fur hat, perky with a peacock's iridescent head and crest.

She was very pretty. The paleness of her illness lent her a new charm. And she walked the lonely road with an air. She had never been a great walker, and she was proud of each of the steps that this clear hill air gave her the courage to take.

And it was glorious, after all, to be alone—the only human thing on these wide moors, where the curlews mewed as if the place belonged to them. There was a sound behind her. The rattle of wheels.

She stopped. She turned and looked. Far below her lay the valley—all about her was the immense quiet of the hills. On the white road, quite a long way off, yet audible in that noble stillness, hoofs rang, wheels whirred. She waited for the thing to pass, for its rings of sound to die out in that wide pool of silence.