"I believe she'll come somehow--trust her," Gabrielle whispered back reassuringly. "Anyhow, we'll go as far as the reservoir, and see. If we climb up at the side of that we can get a splendid view." By this time they were within a quarter of a mile of Deeping Royal. To their left was still the desolate shore, with the narrow strip of shingle separating them from it, but there was a great sense of nearness to the waves which the high wind was driving in big and threatening, with a crest of foam. Before them, crowning the slight rise on which the village stood, were the great twin churches, standing not a stone's-throw apart, with their massive beacon-towers outlined sharply against a clear, wind-swept space in the sky. Below them clustered the village, through which the procession of brakes drove up a rather steep street to the inn, which one reached through an incongruous ivy-hung gateway, bearing on one mouldering dim red pillar the name cut deeply "Good Hope." The "sweet Anne Wendover," whom Roger Malfrey had wooed in vain, because "the wasting sickness" wooed her more successfully, had lived there; and he must have ridden often through those great gates, which now stood wide to _chars-à-bancs_ and brakes all the summer-time, and bore a large printed notice, "Teas provided." "Joey would like this," whispered Gabrielle, as the first brake rattled into the old court-yard, and stood beneath the new sign. "Yes, wouldn't she? Queer how one misses the kid," returned Noreen. "Specially queer when one remembers how we barred her coming from that twopenny-half-penny school." "A man's a man for a' that," quoted Gabrielle. "We were snobs." "You weren't anyway. Well, it's over and done with. Hope she won't be late." "So do I," observed Mademoiselle de Lavernais, with a suddenness which took the two rather aback. They had not realised that she was so near, or that she would take the smallest interest in their conversation. It had, in fact, been a surprise to everyone that "Maddy" should have come at all. She had never professed to take any interest in the school games, or in the life outside her classes. But she had turned up to-day at the hurried lunch, in her rusty black toque, and her coat and skirt of a cut belonging to some five years back, and had climbed into the same brake as Noreen and Gabrielle. The two turned to her politely as soon as she joined in their conversation. "May we see if we can get you a good place, Mademoiselle?" Gabrielle asked; "and then we are going to try and keep one for Joey." Mademoiselle smiled, her little tight-lipped smile, that seemed as though it were a thing stiff from disuse. "Thank you, my child; I am obliged. But I fear I do not come to view the match, though it will give much pleasure to hear of the success of Redlands, I assure you. But the hockey is to me a mystery, and I seek a sketch of this place that may remind me of the fen-land when I no more see it."