If it had not been for the smoke, whirled and beaten about by the breeze, she would have thought the house was not really a human habitation, but a bit of the moor itself risen up, so brown and rough and weather-beaten it looked under its old lichen-grown thatch. But the smoke was real smoke, and Esther, stepping nearer, saw one window lit by the leaping, cheery glow of a fire.
Fascinated and surprised, she drew nearer and nearer. Before the cottage was a little garden surrounded by a sturdy railing and a thick-set, close-clipped holly-hedge, within the shelter of which whole beds of crocuses and daisies and polyanthuses bloomed gaily. The crocuses were all asleep now, their little petals fast closed, and the daisies too, but the polyanthuses looked bravely with their beautiful eyes at the fast darkening sky. Over the cottage walls, as well as on the thatch, lichen and house-leeks grew, as though to prove it was but a boulder, one of the many scattered thereabouts in all directions, and not a house at all.
CHAPTER XII.
Ester stood staring fascinated, quite unconscious of the fact that a pair of bright but dim eyes were peering out at her wonderingly; and she started, quite guiltily, when presently the cottage door opened, and a lady came along the garden path towards her.
Esther began to move away, feeling ashamed that she should have stared so rudely; but the lady hearing her, spoke.
"Don't go away, please," she said in a pretty soft voice with a foreign accent. "I saw you, and I wondered if you had lost your way. It is not often we see strangers here, we are so far away from other houses."
"No-o, thank you," stammered Esther shyly. "I—I don't think I have lost my way. I was out for a walk, and had never been this way before. I have come from Dorsham."
"Dorrsham, oh!" the lady rolled her r's, and poke in the prettiest way imaginable. "It is rather a long walk home for a young lady when the light is beginning to fail. Have you no one with you?"
"No," said Esther, suddenly realising her disobedience in not having brought Guard. "I am not afraid; at least—I—I shall be home before it is dark."