There were two ways to old Sally's cottage, and Maisie knew Dennis would be sure to choose the one which led across the rick-yard of the Manor Farm; indeed, she liked this best herself except for one reason, and that was the risk of meeting the turkey-cock. It was useless for Dennis to say, "He won't gobble if you're not frightened of him." She always _was_ frightened, and he always _did_ gobble, and turned purple with rage, and swelled out all his feathers, and shook a loose scarlet thing which hung down from his neck. They met him to-day, marching at the head of his ladylike wives, who followed him delicately, picking their way and lifting their feet high. Their small heads and quietly elegant toilets made them look rather like Aunt Trevor, Maisie thought. "Now, walk slowly," said Dennis, and she did try to control her fears; but as usual, the moment the turkey-cock began to gobble, she began to run, and did not stop until she was safe on the other side of the gate. From this refuge she watched Dennis, admiring him greatly as he came slowly on, shaking his stick in the turkey-cock's face, and was quite ready to agree with him when he called her a coward. "Only I can't help it," she added. "But you ought to," was Dennis's reply. "It's silly, even for a girl, to be afraid of a turkey-cock." Old Sally's thatched cottage was so near the farm-buildings that it almost looked like one of them, but a narrow lane really ran between, and it stood on its own little plot of ground. At its door there was an immense horse-chestnut, which she could "mind," she said, helping to plant when she was a girl. She had held it straight in the hole while old Mr Solace, the grandfather of this young Master Andrew, had filled in the earth. She was most sorry to think she had done it now, for this ungrateful tree so shaded her window that it made her cottage dark, and besides this, choked up her well, by dropping its great leaves into it in the autumn. Old Sally could "mind" so many things on account of her age, that she was a most amusing and instructive person to visit. She had worked for the Solaces as child, girl, and woman, and now she was pensioned off, and allowed to live in her cottage rent-free with her one remaining unmarried daughter, Anne, of whom she always spoke as her "good child." Anne was over seventy years old, and weakly with bad health and rheumatism, so that there was nothing very youthful about her. Indeed, when they sat side by side, both in sunbonnets which they wore indoors and out, it was difficult to say which was the elder of the two old women.