She heard the boy and his mother laughing and making pretence to quarrel, while he chose the brownest of the hot cakes from the wood-ashes.

She stared out upon Humility's buried pansies.
It was strange--a minute back she had felt quite happy.
Humility set them off, and watched them till they disappeared in the first dip of the towans; and then sat down in the empty kitchen and wept a little before carrying up her mother's breakfast.
Honoria rode in silence for the first mile; but Taffy sang and whistled by turns as he skipped alongside.

The whole world flashed and glittered around the boy and girl; the white gulls fishing, the swallows chasing one another across the dunes, the lighthouse on the distant spit, the white-washed mine-chimneys on the ridge beside the shore.

Away on the rises of the moor one hill-farm laughed to another in a steady flame of furze blossom--laughed with a tinkling of singing larks.

And beyond the last rise lay the land of wonders, George's country.