It stretched--another straight line--beyond the cottage roofs, in colour a pale, unvaried grey-blue; and her first sensation was wonder at its bare simplicity. She rested her bag upon the low hedge, and stood beside it at gaze, her body bent forward to meet the wind. For five minutes and more she stood there, so completely absorbed that the sound of footsteps on the road drew near and passed her unheard. A few paces beyond they came to a halt. "Begging your pardon, miss, but that bag is heavy for you," said a voice. She turned with a start, and, as she did so, was aware of a scent about her, not strong, but deliciously clean and fragrant. It came from a tuft of wild thyme on which her palm had been pressing while she leaned. "Thank you, it is not heavy," she answered, in some confusion. "I--I just rested it here while I looked out to sea." She knew him at once for the blue-jerseyed young man she had seen in talk with the porters; and apparently he had prevailed, for he stooped under the weight of a great burden, in which Hester recognised a blackboard, an easel, a coloured globe, and sundry articles of school furniture very cleverly lashed together and slung across his shoulder by a stout cord. He was smiling, and she smiled too, moved perhaps by the sight of these familiar objects in a strange land. "If you'm bound for Troy, you may so well let me carry it, miss. There's a terrible steep hill to go up, and a pound or two's weight won't make no difference to what I got here." She had taken up her bag resolutely and was moving on. The young man--it was most awkward--also moved on, and in step with her. She compressed her lip, wondering how to hint that she did not desire his company. A glance told her that he was entirely without guile, that he had made his offer in mere good-nature. How might she dismiss him and yet avoid hurting his feelings? "They argued me down at the station," he went on. "Would have it the traps couldn' possibly be in the van. But I wasn't going to have my walk for nothing if I could help it. 'Give me leave to look,' said I; and I was right, you see!" He nodded his head as triumphantly as his burden allowed. It weighed him down, and the stoop gave his eyes, when he smiled, an innocent roguish slant. Hester noted that he wore rings in his brown ears, and somehow these ornaments made him appear the more boyish. "But what are you doing with a blackboard and easel?" she asked. "They're for old Mother Butson. She lives with my mother and keeps school. Tidy little outlay for her, all this parcel! but she must move with the times, poor soul." "Then hers is not a Board School?--since she is buying these things for herself." "Board School? Not a bit of it. You're right there, miss: we're the Opposition." He laughed, showing two rows of white regular teeth. "Are you a teacher too?"