The heath was wild enough in those days--clumps of woodland, straggling bushes, wide expanses of turf, vast pits made by the gravel and sand diggers, the slopes scored by water courses with here and there a foot path--all was picturesque.

The ponds were very much as they are now, save that their boundaries were not restrained and after heavy rains the water spread at its own free will.
The village itself on the slopes overlooking the heath was cramped, the houses squeezed together in narrow passages with openings here and there where glorious views of the Highgate Woods and the country beyond delighted the eye.
Lavinia inquired for Betty Higgins in the village, but without success.
Indeed, the houses were not such as washerwomen could afford to live in.
Then she went into the quaint tavern known as the Upper Flask and here she was told that a Mrs.Higgins who did laundry work was to be found in a cottage not far from Jack Straw's Castle on the Spaniards' road and thither Lavinia tramped, footsore and tired, for she had walked all the way from London.
Betty, a stout, sturdy woman was at her clothes lines stretched from posts on a patch of drying ground in front of her cottage.

She opened wide her round blue eyes as Lavinia approached her.
"Are you Betty Higgins ?" asked Lavinia.
"Aye, that's me sure enough; an' who may you be, young woman ?" "I'm Lavinia Fenton, a friend of your Cousin Hannah, who works for my mother at the coffee house in the Old Bailey." "So you're the young miss as she told me of! Why, that be months an' months agone.

An' you never comed.

It put me about, it did." "I'm very sorry.