“Scott’s Rokeby!” she said to herself. Scott was not one of her modern gods, but still the names--famous and familiar to everyone--“Brignal Banks” and Greta Bridge--had a certain old-world magic of their own. So, acting on the inspiration of the moment, she took a ticket for Barnard Castle, and at twelve o’clock found herself in the market-place of the sleepy little town on the Tees, in front of a char-à-banc full of tourists just starting for Rokeby, four miles off. She took a seat. Once arrived there, she declined to make the tour of the famous Park with a guide and a noisy party of barbarians, with fern-leaves artlessly stuck behind their ears, but, leaving her bag in charge of the obliging porter at the gates, whom the more effectually to cajole she took off her spectacles for a second, started on a voyage of discovery in the opposite direction, across the bridge, following the course of the Greta, along a cart track in a wood, to the east. She did not in the least know where this path would lead her; she only knew that she was extremely happy. She felt just as she imagined the young journeyman heroes in the tales of Grimm must have felt when they walked, knapsack in hand, to seek their fortunes. She walked with an assured step, she sang to herself, she listened to the jubilant song of the mounting larks that came from the fields on the other side of the river, she enjoyed the country as only a town-bred person can; she actually experienced the joy of life she had read about so often. “I have not seen enough of nature!” she said to herself, as one says of a friend who lives a long way off, and whom one has somehow neglected. Tags of poetry, scraps of philosophy, queer mythological ideas, born of her miscellaneous reading, about the Earth Mother and the Earth Spirit, passed through her mind. What a terribly artificial life it was that she had been leading! Nature was the real thing after all! And meantime, at home in smoky, sophisticated Newcastle, Mortimer and Mrs. Poynder and Charles would be sitting down to the substantial midday meal that their souls loved, and that she had carefully ordered for them before she left, as a valedictory service. She pictured the complacent three, pent up in the hideous, stuffy dining-room (Mortimer’s taste--she was only permitted jurisdiction over the drawing-room), with all the windows fast closed down in accordance with that innate dislike of fresh air inherent in some persons, and a blazing fire for the crown of discomfort.