To Baba, the farmyard was an unfailing source of delight; and to Christina, the great spaces of moorland, the deep lanes, the woods whose soft brown hues gave colour to the hillsides, were a welcome change from London streets, and the squalor of London lodgings. To the girl who for so long had been tossing on a sea of struggle and privation, her quiet life at Graystone was like a haven of rest; and her one passionate prayer was, that at the end of her month of probation, she might still find favour in Lady Cicely's eyes, and keep the situation which seemed to her a more delightful one than she had ever dared to hope for in her wildest dreams. With the help of a little pony cart, she and the child could make quite lengthy excursions about the country side, and Christina often found herself wondering why it was the fashion to talk as if there were no beauties to be found in the country in winter time. She revelled in the great sweeps of moorland that rolled away to far hills on the horizon, hills scarcely less blue than the soft blue of the winter sky. And, if the moorlands were no longer clad in their robe of purple heather, or pale pink ling, the duns and browns of heath and bracken, the dark green of fir-trees, and the brightly tinted leaves of the bilberry plants offered no lack of colour. On the oaks in the lanes bright brown leaves still hung; and the trees that were leafless--delicate birches, sturdy ashes, smooth-stemmed beeches, made so dainty a lacework of bare boughs against their background of sky, that the leaflessness was in itself beautiful. The sunlight poured a flood of radiance on the upland road, as Christina and Baba jogged peacefully along it, in the wake of the small black pony, who meandered on at his own pace, just as the fancy took him. Larks sang in the sunlight; in the copse under the hill the thrushes were already beginning to learn their songs of spring; and Christina, drinking in all the loveliness about her, laughed aloud for sheer gladness of heart. They had driven for some distance along the main road, when they came to a spot where four roads met, and towards one of them Baba pointed a fat forefinger. "Let's go along there," she said; "it's such a ducky wee road, and there's a pond." Christina was lain to confess that the road indicated had special attractions of its own. It wound down from the upland, between hedges which in summer must be a tangled loveliness of briar roses, honeysuckle, and clematis; and, skirting a common where a pond reflected the sunshine on its small ruffled waves, turned down again between woods that climbed steeply up the hill-side on either hand. The lane narrowed as it wound onwards, and Christina was beginning to wonder whether it would end in a mere grassy track, when she saw a clearing in the woods on the right-hand side, and became aware of chimney-pots showing above a very high wall.