"I hope I look as nice as you do," said Anstice with her bright laugh. "Now come along. You will have to show me that way."
"It's just as if we're going to a party," muttered Josie.
"Well, I suppose we are," said Anstice. "It is a gathering together to meet a King in His Palace."
They walked for a mile along the high road, then turned up a lane between buttercup meadows and arched over with lime trees, which were sending their sweet flowering scent over the fields.
"I'm making a plan for this afternoon," Anstice said. "I wonder if you will fall in with it. I thought we would take Ruffie down to the lake side by the little chalet, and then we can all sit out there, and have our tea in the chalet, and I will read you a lovely story that I used to read when I was a little girl. It is about some adventures of some pilgrim children."
"Then we can have the boat anchored and sit in it," said Josie.
"Yes, perhaps you can. It is such a lovely day that it is a pity to stay in the house."
By and by they came to the church, which was on the road with the Fells rising up steeply behind it. The bell was tolling; and a few country people were making their way into it.
Very curious gazes were sent in the direction of the Squire's seat that morning. It was one of the side seats in the north apse of the church.
There was a good congregation for a country church. Anstice was aware that there was a fair sprinkling of the upper classes. Mrs. Wykeham and her husband occupied the first seat under the pulpit. Behind them were an old couple with their two daughters, who showed, from their bored, indifferent faces, how little interested they were in the service. Farther back in the church was a strikingly handsome, grey-haired woman. Anstice wondered who she was, and thought that she would like to know her.