Presently she heard voices and laughter borne to her on the wind. Before long she reached a kind of plateau of grass, the highest point of all, which commanded a wide view of both Downs and the chessboard landscape far below, crossed by the white roads like streamers from a Maypole; and at the further end of this plateau she saw scattered in pairs over the grass, and assembled at one point as a nucleus from which these couples had detached themselves, the youth of the village of King’s Avon in holiday clothes with wild flowers strung about them. She reined in her pony, not liking to interrupt their fun by drawing too near or seeming to admire them as a curiosity. She could recognise most of them at that distance; she picked out the red head of Daisy Morland, the long limbs of Peter Gorwyn, the sunbonnet of Phoebe Patch, the silly laugh of young Baskett, the straw-coloured shock of hair belonging to Job Lackland, the black strap-shoes and white stockings of Annabel Blagdon, who was the belle of the village, and, finally, prowling on the outskirts rather like a pariah dog, the indefinably misshapen form of Olver Lovel. Near by the group were set down the wicker baskets in which they had brought their meal, also the trowels, spades, turf-cutters, and hoes, apparently forgotten. The occasion of the expedition was rendered completely invisible by the sprawling of the persons seated upon it. This was none other than one of the famous White Horses, which on that day must be scoured, that is to say, cleaned of ten years’ accumulation of weeds and grasses; though it was said that less plantains were uprooted than matches made that day, and that the true business of keeping the White Horse duly scoured was performed by some sober shepherd with a pocket-knife, idling away the hours while his sheep moved slowly within his sight. Nevertheless the tradition must be maintained. Clare felt a slight wistfulness that she might not join in with the party, but she had been for so many years strictly forbidden to do this by an indignant Martha Sparrow,--“’Twould not be befitting your station at all, Miss Clare, indeed, to go with those rough louts of boys and hoydens of girls,”--that she had come to accept this ban as a law of nature, without question. She therefore sat her pony at a distance, looking on enviously at the clumsy fun in progress, watching the boys roll over and over down the slope and get up dusting themselves and laughing, or wrestling with one another on the grass and making a show of their superior strength before the girls, who laughed and applauded. She felt especially envious when she saw Job Lackland pick up his fiddle, settle it firm under his chin, and begin to play, the notes of the old-fashioned tune reaching her as clearly as notes struck on a bell, and she could see the sprigged waistcoat and cut-away coat which Job always wore on feast-days when he thought he might be called upon to play the fiddle.