'I should think so,' said old Sarah, but there was something in her tone I did not quite understand.
CHAPTER II
AN UNEXPECTED PROPOSAL
We hurried across the common—it was still daylight though the sun had set some little time. The red and gold were still lingering in the sky and casting a beautiful glow on the heather and the gorse bushes. For Brayling Common is not like what the word makes most people think of—there's no grass at all—it's all heather and gorse, and here and there clumps of brambles, and low down on the sandy soil all sorts of hardy, running, clinging little plants that ask for nothing but sunshine and air. For of moisture there's but scanty supply; it no sooner rains than it dries up again. But oh it is beautiful—the colours of it I've never seen equalled—not even in Italy or Switzerland, where I went with my first ladies, as I said before. The heather seems to change its shade a dozen times a day, as well as with every season—according as the sky is cloudy or bright, or the sun overhead or on his way up or down. I cannot say it the right way, but I know that many far cleverer than me would feel the same; you may travel far before you'd see a sweeter piece of nature than our common, with its wonderful changefulness and yet always beautiful.
There's little footpaths in all directions, as well as a few wider tracks. It takes strangers some time to learn their way, I can tell you. The footpaths are seldom wide enough for two, so it's a queer sort of backwards and forwards talking one has to be content with. And we walked too fast to have breath for much, only Widow Nutfold would now and then throw back to me, so to say, some odds and ends of explaining about the children that she thought I'd best know.
'They're dear young ladies,' she said, 'though Miss Elisabeth is a bit masterful and Miss Baby—Augusta's her proper name—a bit spoilt. Take them all together, I think Miss Lally's my favourite, or would be if she was a little happier, poor child! I can't stand whiney children.'
I smiled to myself—I knew that the good woman's experience of children was not great—she had married late and never had one of her own. It was real goodness that made her take such an interest in the little Penroses.
'Poor child,' I said, 'perhaps the cross nurse has made her so,' at which Sarah gave a sort of grunt. 'What is her real name—the middle young lady's, I mean?'