The disconsolate pair drifted ruefully from the room, though Jeanne did recollect to take the chocolates.  Doctor Mary stood looking down at the fire, her lips still shaped in that firm, wise, and philosophical smile with which doctors and nurses—­and indeed, sometimes, anybody who happens to be feeling pretty well himself—­console, or exasperate, suffering humanity.  “A very good thing the poor silly child did come to me!” That was the form her thoughts took.  For although Dr. Mary Arkroyd was, and knew herself to be, no dazzling genius at her profession—­in moments of candor she would speak of having “scraped through” her qualifying examinations—­she had a high opinion of her own common sense and her power of guiding weaker mortals.

For all that Jeanne’s cheek bulged with a chocolate, there was open resentment on her full, pouting lips, and a hint of the same feeling in Cynthia’s still liquid eyes, when mistress and maid came downstairs again.  Without heeding these signs, Mary drew on her gauntlets, took her walking-stick, and flung the hall door open.  A rush of cold wind filled the little hall.  Jeanne shivered ostentatiously; Cynthia sighed and muffled herself deeper in her fur collar.  “A good walking day!” said Mary decisively.

Up to now, Inkston had not impressed Cynthia Walford very favorably.  It was indeed a mixed kind of a place.  Like many villages which lie near to London and have been made, by modern developments, more accessible than once they were, it showed chronological strata in its buildings.  Down by the station all was new, red, suburban.  Mounting the tarred road, the wayfarer bore slightly to the right along the original village street; bating the aggressive “fronts” of one or two commercial innovators, this was old, calm, serene, gray in tone and restful, ornamented by three or four good class Georgian houses, one quite fine, with well wrought iron gates (this was Dr. Irechester’s); turning to the right again, but more sharply, the wayfarer found himself once more in villadom, but a villadom more ornate, more costly, with gardens to be measured in acres—­or nearly.  This was Hinton Avenue (Hinton because it was the maiden name of the builder’s wife; Avenue because avenue is genteel).  Here Mary dwelt, but by good luck her predecessor, Dr. Christian Evans, had seized upon a surviving old cottage at the end of the avenue, and, indeed, of Inkston village itself.  Beyond it stretched meadows, while the road, turning again, ran across an open heath, and pursued its way to Sprotsfield, four miles distant, a place of greater size where all amenities could be found.

It was along this road that the friends now walked, Mary setting a brisk pace.  “When once you’ve turned your back on the Avenue, it’s heaps better,” she said.  “Might be real country, looking this way, mightn’t it?  Except the Naylors’ place—­Oh, and Tower Cottage—­there are no houses between this and Sprotsfield.”

The wind blew shrewdly, with an occasional spatter of rain; the withered bracken lay like a vast carpet of dull copper-color under the cloudy sky; scattered fir-trees made fantastic shapes in the early gloom of a December day.  A somber scene, yet wanting only sunshine to make it flash in a richness of color; even to-day its quiet and spaciousness, its melancholy and monotony, seemed to bid a sympathetic and soothing welcome to aching and fretted hearts.