He was in pursuit of mastery now.
II
As he came abreast of Burdon he edged down the Ridge, making towards a little copse that ran up from a garden behind the last cottage in the village street, the nearest to Little Letham. In the roadway this cottage displayed, suspended from its porch, the notice, painted in white letters on a black board:
POST OFFIC
(The painter had misjudged the space at his disposal but had added the missing E on the back of the board, "Case," as he explained, "unnybody be that dense as to turn her round to see what her do mean.")
The cottage served in those days for the reception and distribution of all the letters of the westward vale, a community little bothered with correspondence; and "Post Offic" was conducted by a slight little woman whom some called Postmum, some Miss Oxford. She was the daughter of a former vicar of Little Letham; to twelfth Baron Burdon she was Audrey's sister.
Deep in the trees, as he approached the copse, the sharp white of a skirt caught his eager eye. Taking a grassy path, he went noiselessly down and presently was separated from his Audrey by the dense thorn that hedged the tiny glade in which he found her. A basket of young fern roots was beside her and she was stooped, her back towards him, exploring in the undergrowth.
He thought to steal up to her, and tried. The dense thorn locked him, and she heard him and turned swiftly towards him.
She was flushed with her stooping. Now a deeper flush rose beneath her colour, sinking it in a warmer glow that stained her exquisitely from throat to brow. The dark violet's shade was in her eyes; when her colour abated, the pale rose's delicacy might have been shamed against the fairness of her skin. She wore no hat; her soft brown locks unruled the ribbon at her neck, and the breeze stirred her hair in little waves about her temples. Her arms were bare where she had thrust her sleeves beneath her elbows. She stood poised, as one might say, upon the feet of surprise; and her lips were slightly parted, her gentle bosom seeming to hold her breath as though she feared the smallest sigh would waft away the sudden gladness that had caught it.
She just whispered, "Roly!"