Some time before Christmas the gales dropped; the wind veered releasing the sun, and for a fortnight there was fleckless winter weather. These were glorious mornings to wander down through the west garden past the escallonias aromatic in the sunlight, past the mauve and blue and purple veronicas, out over the watery meadows and up the hill-sides, where the gorse was almond-scented about midday in the best of the sun. Here for a week she and May roamed delightfully, until they found themselves in a field of bullocks and, greatly terrified, went back to the seashore. "Handsome weather," old Mrs. Trewhella would say, watching them set out for their long walks, and, after blinking once or twice at the sun, thumping back to the kitchen, back to household superintendence and the preparation of heavy meals for the farm workers. Jenny was not inclined to talk much with them. They lived a life so remote from hers that not even the bridge of common laughter could span the gulf. Dicky Rosewarne, for all his good looks, was detestably cruel with his gins and snares and cunning pursuit of goldfinches and, worse, his fish-hooks baited for wild duck. Yet he was kind enough to the great cart-horses, conversing with them all work-time in a guttural language they seemed perfectly to comprehend. Bessie Trevorrow, the dairymaid, was even less approachable than Dicky. She had the shyness of a wild thing, and would fly past Jenny, gazing in the opposite direction. Once or twice, under the pressure of proximity, they embarked upon a conversation; but Jenny found it difficult to talk well with a woman who answered her in ambiguous phrases of agreement or vague queries. Old Man Veal Jenny disliked since on one occasion she observed him bobbing up and down behind a hedge to watch her. Thomas was her favorite among the hands. He had grown used to bringing her curiosities newly found, and others chosen from a collection that extended back to his earliest youth. These he would present for her inspection, as a dog lays a stick at his mistress's feet. Jenny, although she was profoundly uninterested by the cannon-ball he had found wedged between two rocks, by the George III halfpenny turned up by the plough, by his strings of corks and bundles of torn nets, was nevertheless touched by his offer to strike a "lemon" for her under a jam-jar in the spring. Nor did she listen distastefully to the long sing-song tales with which he entertained May.