rather lonely to be a middle person in a family--cut off above and below. Pamela vaguely wondered where she was gone to; a natural conclusion being that some one must be ill in one of the farms.

Wheeling the bicycle on up the clean even road she left all trace of houses behind and came to the woods at the back of the valley.  The road ran between an over-shadowing height on one side, and thick woods on the other--they bridged the centre of the deep to where the southern heights towered up, covered with more woods.

Presently a white wall began, and the trees behind it thinned a good deal.  The wall was high and had broken glass along the top of it. There was a distinct suggestion of rebuff to an inquiring public. Pamela, looking at it, remembered Kipling’s story in which "the invasion of privacy" is spoken of as a danger.  In this part of the far west land there did not seem much need for walling yourself in, she thought. Moreover, no one lived at Woodrising but Mrs. Trewby the pessimistic caretaker, and it belonged to Sir Marmaduke, who wanted to let it, and had wanted to let it ever since he bought it before the War.  There was the big square board--"To be let un-furnished".  There were several boards at different points, but no one took the house.  It required much money spent on the inside, and the large pretty gardens were neglected. No one worked in them but Peter Cherry, son of Mrs. Rebecca Cherry, the widow who ran the Temperance house in conjunction with her sister Mrs. Paramore.As Pamela passed the big double gates in the wall, she glanced up at the house behind them. Little could be seen of it but slate roof and chimneys. It was a square, white house of moderate size; not pretty, but comfortable. There was smoke going up from four chimneys. Pamela noticed this as she noticed most things, and deduced from it that Mrs. Trewby was airing the rooms. She also decided that Sir Marmaduke must find the house--still unlet--a great expense. People said he had bought it because he did not want anyone in the valley of an uncongenial kind. He and the Romilly family owned the whole place in present circumstances. A third family--the sort that could afford a house and grounds like Woodrising, might be in the way! That is what people said; no one knew anything actually, because the great K.C. was not a man to confide his affairs to the general public.

Pamela, having glanced at the chimneys went on her way still alongside the white wall with glass on its top. She was walking in the road and some impulse caused her to glance back at the gates when she had gone some little distance. She could just see that one of them 

 Prev. P 6/404 next