They touched their hats to Dan and his sister, and with a melancholy shake of their old heads sighed in sympathy with Kitty as she cried, "O Dan, I wish we could all go by train, all the way to Wenbridge.

It will be perfectly lovely down the line." But Dan seemed less eager than Kitty or the old men.

"We shall reach the woods before they do, if we walk on," he said, moving away; "and there is such a lot to see on the way." Tony and Betty--who was carrying the basket because she felt she could trust no one else with it--were nearly out of sight, so Dan and Kitty hurried after them.

One side of the road was lined by fields, the other by houses, and at the foot of their gardens ran the railway line until it emerged through some allotment gardens on to the open road, after which, for a while, train and foot passengers, and sometimes a drover, with a herd of cattle, meandered along side by side in pleasant talk or lively dispute--the latter usually, when Dan was on the road--until, about a mile farther on, two more cottages, and the last, having been passed, the road came to an abrupt end, and only the railway was left, with a rough footpath along its edge, which pedestrians had worn for themselves.
The quartette wandered on contentedly, stopping when they pleased, and that was every few minutes.

Overhead the sky was a deep pure blue, and the larks were singing rapturously; the sun shone brilliantly, drawing out the smell of the tar from the "sleepers," and the scent from the flowers.