“Here we are at last,” Florence said, as they stopped before a red-brick cottage that stood only a few yards back from the road. On either side of it was a fir plantation. There was a gravel pathway round the house, but the other paths were covered with tan. Behind stretched a wilderness of garden almost entirely uncultivated. There was a little footway that wound through it in and out among beeches and larches and firs and oaks, and stopped at last on the ridge of a dip that could hardly be called a valley. “Sometimes,” said Florence, as they walked about, half an hour later, while the servants were busy within, “we go down the dip and up the other side, and so get over to Hindhead. It is nearer than going there by the road.” “Our house is over there,” the children said. “Their house,” explained Florence, “is a little, lonely, thatched shed, half a mile away. We don’t know who made it. It is in a lovely part on the other side of the dip, among the straggling trees. Perhaps some one tethered a cow in it once. The children call it their house now, because one day they had tea there. After I return next week we must try and walk across to it.” But the old lady’s eyes were turned towards the distance. “And the road in front of the house,” she asked, “where does that go to?” “It winds round the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and over Hindhead, and on through Liphook and Petersfield to Portsmouth.” Aunt Anne did not answer, she looked still more intently into the distance, and gave a long sigh. “It is most exhilarating to be out of London again, my dear Florence,” she said. “I sincerely trust it will prove beneficial to your dear ones. I was born in the country, and I hope that some day I shall die in it. London is most oppressive after a time.” “I like London,” Florence answered; “still it does now and then feel like a prison.” “And the rows and rows of houses are the prison bars, my love. May we enter the cottage?” she asked suddenly. She was evidently tired; she stooped, and looked older and more worn than usual. “Poor old dear,” Florence thought. “I hope she is not worrying about Madame Celestine’s bill, and that she will soon hear from Sir William Rammage. Then she will be happier.” It was a little house, simple inside as well as out, with tiny rooms, plainly furnished. The dining-room had been newly done up, with cretonne curtains and a dado, and a buttery-hatch in which Florence took a certain pride as something rather grand for so small a place. The drawing-room was old-fashioned; a stiff roomy sofa with hard flat cushions at one end; at the other a sweet jangling piano. There were corner cupboards with china bowls of pot-pourri on them; on either side of the fireplace a gaunt, high-backed easy-chair, and on the left of each chair an old-fashioned screen on which was worked a peacock. Aunt Anne stopped on the threshold.