She never referred to her blindness, and so complete a victory over misfortune and circumstance gained its fit respect in the country. No one considered that it was "doing a charity" to Mary to drive past her cottage on the way from market to give her news of a football match or fair about to be held in the district. Women would send their children on their way to school to give similar news, and the boy who brought her the roll of newspapers, which she sold at the station every morning, would often wheel her barrow for her. She had a large, clumsy chest on the frame of an old perambulator, in which she wheeled about her store of aerated waters, toffee, and newspapers. She would place herself at the gate of the cricket ground on Saturday afternoon. The sliding lid of her chest made a counter on which she set her scales and her neatly cut pile of paper for wrapping up the toffee. She had no rivals in the district, for the most avaricious small shop-keeper would have been ashamed to confuse or trouble the simple, good, courageous woman. Perhaps the most complete sign of her triumph over her disability was, that no one dreamed of calling her "Poor Mary." Like her friend, Anne Hilton, she was a member of the little wayside chapel, which, with all that it meant, made a centre of warmth and fellowship for both lonely women. CHAPTER VI So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day, a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now drew it home again behind the hill. As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light, like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims. A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice, entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.