The squire poured into her palm some loose silver and one piece of gold—the whole not amounting to so much as five dollars.
Wynnette thanked him and skipped out of the parlor to find Hetty.
She found her waiting just outside the door. Hetty was a very good girl in her way; but she profited by the traditions of her class, and generally was to be found waiting when ladies were leaving the inn.
Wynnette pressed the half sovereign into the hand of the girl. Wynnette was a generous and extravagant little wretch, without the slightest idea of the value of money, and therefore likely, in some opinions, to come to poverty.
This half sovereign was about four times as much as the maid ever got from the richest of the inn’s guests; and she courtesied about four times as often in return.
“Small favors gratefully acknowledged, large ones in proportion,” seemed to be her just and simple rule.
“Come, Wynnette. Come, my dear,” called her father, who was already in the hall waiting for her.
In another minute the whole party were in the dilapidated carryall, and the driver turned the horse’s head eastward into an almost invisible roadway over the moor.
It was a splendid June morning. The sky was of a deep, clear sapphire blue so seldom seen even on the sunniest days in England. The moor took a darker shade of color from the sky, and the heather with which it was thickly overgrown seemed of a deep, intense green. The ground rolled in hills and dales, gradually rising higher and higher toward the range of mountains on the eastern horizon, where the highest ridges were capped with soft, snow-white clouds. As the sun rose higher, these clouds, as well as the mountain sides, became tinted with the most delicate and beautiful hues of rose, azure, emerald and gold, melting into each other and forming the loveliest varieties of color, light and shade.
Yet in the vast solitude of the moor no human being or human dwelling was to be seen.