It was close on noon, and the blazing light of early summer filled all the place beneath her. The view had no charms of its own, but the fact that she was above the ground and away from immediate contact with the sordid earth had a purifying effect upon the scene. Then, again, what place is it that can look wholly evil when shone upon by the unclouded sun of fresh May?
In front and to right and left the canal flamed in the sunlight. At the other side of the water lay a sloping bank of lush green grass, beyond that a road, and at the other side of the road a large yard, in which a great number of gipsy-vans, and vans belonging to cheap-Jacks and to men who remove furniture, were packed.
So far, if there was nothing to delight, there was nothing to displease the spectator. In fact, from a scenic point of view the colour was very good, for you had the flaming canal, the dark green of the grassy bank, and the red and yellow and blue caravans of the gipsies and the cheap-Jacks and the people who remove furniture.
Beyond this yard there spread a vast extent of small, mean, ill-kept houses which were not picturesque, and which suggested painful thoughts concerning the squalor and poverty of the people who lived in them.
To the right stretched the tow-path leading to Camberwell, to the left a row of stores, and only a hundred yards off was the empty ice-house. To the right lay Leeham, invisible from where the girl stood, and nearer and visible a row of stores and a stone-yard.
In front of her was Boland's. Ait, and in the old timber-yard of the islet Francis Bramwell walking up and down, holding the hand of a boy of between three and four in his hands, as though the child had walked for the first time within this month of May.
Mrs. Grainger was right. This man, whose face Hetty could not see, for he bent low over the child, was treating the boy as though he were no more than a year or fifteen months old. He was also displaying towards him a degree of affection altogether inconsistent with the supposition that the youngster was merely the son of a friend.
The two were walking up and down the yard, the right hand of the child in the left hand of the man, the right hand of the man at one time resting lightly on the boy's head, at another on the boy's shoulder. The man's whole mind seemed centred on his charge. He never once raised his head to look around. No doubt the thought that he might be observed never occurred to him. For two years he had lived on that island, and never until now arose a chance of any one seeing him when he was in the yard; for the only windows that overlooked it were those of Crawford's House, and that had been unoccupied until three days ago.
Suddenly it occurred to Hetty that she was intruding upon this stranger's privacy. Of course she was free to look out of her own window as long as she liked; but then it was obvious Bramwell thought there was no spectator, or, at all events, he had not bargained in his mind for a spectator.
A faint flush came into her cheek, and she was on the point of drawing back when a loud shrill voice sounded at her side: