‘Take Mrs. Abbott for a walk tomorrow morning,’ she said in private; ’you must have so many things to talk about —­ by yourselves.’

‘I don’t know that we have,’ Harvey returned, looking at her with some surprise.  ’I want to hear a little more about those youngsters, that’s all.’

Mrs. Abbott wished to climb Cam Bodvean the great hill, clad in tender green of larch-woods, which overlooked the town.  For the toil of this ascent Alma had no mind; pleasantly excusing herself, she proposed at breakfast that Harvey and Mrs. Abbott should go alone; they might descend on the far side of the mountain, and there, at a certain point known to her husband, she would meet them with the dogcart.  Harvey understood this to mean that the man would drive her; for Alma had not yet added the art of driving to her various accomplishments; she was, indeed, timid with the reins.  He readily assented to the plan, which, for some reason, appeared to amuse and exhilarate her.

‘Don’t be in a hurry,’ she said.  ’There’ll be a good view on a day like this, and you can have a long rest at the top.  If you meet me at half-past one, we shall be back for lunch at two.’

When they started, Alma came out to the garden gate, and dismissed them with smiling benignity; one might have expected her to say ‘Be good!’ as when children are trusted to take a walk without superintendence.  On re-entering, she ran quickly to an upper room, where from the window she could observe them for a few minutes, as they went along in conversation.  Presently she bade her servant give directions for the dogcart to be brought round at one o’clock.

‘Williams to drive, ma’am?’ said Ruth, who had heard something of the talk at breakfast.

‘No,’ Alma replied with decision.  ‘I shall drive myself.’

The pedestrians took their way along a winding road, between boulder walls thick-set with the new leaves of pennywort; then crossed the one long street of the town (better named a village), passing the fountain, overbuilt with lichened stone, where women and children filled their cans with sweet water, sparkling in the golden light.  Rolfe now and then received a respectful greeting.  He had wished to speak Welsh, but soon abandoned the endeavour.  He liked to hear it, especially on the lips of children at their play.  An old, old language, symbol of the vitality of a race; sounding on those young lips as in the time when his own English, composite, hybrid, had not yet begun to shape itself.

Beyond the street and a row of cottages, they began to climb; at first a gentle ascent, on either hand high hedges of flowering blackthorn, banks strewn with primroses and violets, and starred with the white stitchwort; great leaves of foxglove giving promise for future days.  The air was bland, yet exquisitely fresh; scented from innumerable sources in field and heath and wood.  When the lane gave upon open ground, they made a pause to look back.  Beneath them lay the little grey town, and beyond it the grassy cliffs, curving about a blue bay.  Near by rose the craggy slopes of a bare hill, and beyond it, a few miles to the north, two lofty peaks, wreathed against the cloudless heaven with rosy mist.