"I say Tom dear, don't say you saw me.

I am going out for a turn, and I don't want them to know it." Tom twisted up his great face into a mixture of mystery, admiration, wonder, and acquiescence, and, having opened the gate for her, went in.
But Mary walked quickly down a deep narrow lane, overarched with oak, and melodious with the full rich notes of the thrush, till she saw down the long vista, growing now momentarily darker, the gleaming of a ford where the road crossed a brook.
Not the brook where the Vicar and the Major went fishing.

Quite a different sort of stream, although they were scarcely half a mile apart, and joined just below.

Here all the soil was yellow clay, and, being less fertile, was far more densely wooded than any of the red country.

The hills were very abrupt, and the fields but sparely scattered among the forest land.