Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/261

 Then the Severn Sea and across the water the white cliffs of Wales. The coach rolled into Porlock Weir. She stayed at the old Ship Inn. There was a rough shingle beach, where the tides sucked and pounded and above were sea-gulls against a low, leaden sky. A few fishermen's houses, loaded like Easter bonnets with masses of flowers. A cobbled street and the old white plaster inn cozy under its hat of thatch.

A certain number of excursionists, free souls, who liked to tramp, came across the moors carrying knapsacks. They knew this inn well and its famous cider.

The long journey, the continual jouncing, and the excitement had tired Lanice. She was glad to lie in her whitewashed room under the eaves deep sunk in her billowy bed which the chambermaid warmed with hot stones. 'I'll stay here,' she decided, 'for weeks—if I want to. I may stay for months.' There was a delicious sense of peace and homely comfort. She would explore this wild romantic country alone and on foot. She would eat her sweet bread and fresh butter, drink her tea before the wide fireplace in the common room below, and sleep the clock around in this huge warm bed.

Her first walk was through the park-like woods along the cliffs to the wee church of Culbane, and so on to Square Mount Castle—no castle at all, only a rambling stone country house almost hidden in beech and oak. The next day she hired the only pair of