“Nonsense, John, I will go; I shall like the walk this lovely day. I don’t mind the sun a bit; I love it; besides, I shall be back before the heat of the day. Tell me where I am to go, and what I am to say.” “But, my pretty one, mother does not like you to go to Lewes alone, does she?” “In a case like this she would not mind; it is great nonsense at all, I think, for the Leslie girls go in alone, one or other of them, every day.” John smiled, partly at the way in which Fairy identified herself with the Leslie girls, as if they were in the same position as herself, and partly at her naivety in not seeing that it was one thing for a plain girl like Maud Leslie to walk about Lewes alone, and quite another for the shepherd’s pretty dainty little foster daughter. However, he was very anxious about his sheep, and wanted the veterinary fetched as quickly as possible, and he knew he could trust Fairy to go far better than a boy in the village, so he accepted her offer, and gave her the necessary directions. Fairy ran upstairs to tell Mrs. Shelley where she was going and to fetch her hat, and then set off in high glee, very much enjoying the novelty of going to Lewes alone, though Mrs. Shelley, as she first bent and kissed her before starting, grumbled at John’s imprudence in allowing it. And certainly there was something to be said on Mrs. Shelley’s side of the question, for Fairy was a girl who could not walk out without attracting attention; not that she was so exceedingly beautiful, but there was such a brilliancy in her beauty, which was of the pocket-Venus type, such a freshness and brightness about her, that everyone who saw her involuntarily turned to look after this little sunbeam who had just shed a ray of light across his path. She was dressed in a very simple white dress, with a large straw hat, with a piece of blue ribbon round it on her head. Fairy was very fond of white dresses, and very extravagant, for she never would wear a soiled one, and good Mrs. Shelley, who took a great pride in the girl’s appearance, washed and starched and ironed them for her without complaining. Fairy’s way lay down the lane and across some fields, by a kind of drift, to the Winter-bourne, now a mere tiny brook, which you could easily step over, and then down a road with fields on one side and the Priory grounds on the other, to the town. She met no one till she reached the bourne, and she tripped along quickly, resolutely denying herself the pleasure of gathering all the wild roses she came across, partly because, she told herself, she must make haste on her important errand, partly because it would soil her dress. “I must gather all I can as I come back,” said Fairy, with a longing glance at the fence, covered with the lovely wild roses, pink and white and cream-coloured, the loveliest of all our wild flowers—the “rose of all the roses.” But when she came back that golden head was too full of other thoughts to remember the roses.