“Pooh! We’ve come thousands. Come on, Mark; we’ll get round somehow.”
But the girl convinced him after a time that it was not possible, because of the marsh and the brook, and showed him too how the shadows of the elms were lengthening in the meadow outside the garden at the foot of the hill. Bevis reluctantly decided that they must abandon the expedition for that day, and return home. The girl offered to show them the way into the road. She led them by a narrow path beside the streamlet in the gully, and then along the steep side of the hill, where there were three or four more cottages, all built on the slope, steep as it was. The path in front of the doors had a kind of breastwork, that folk might not inadvertently tumble over and roll—if not quite sober—into the gully beneath. Yet there were small gardens behind, which almost stood up on end, the vegetables appearing over the roofs.
Upon the breastwork or mound they had planted a few flowers, all yellow, or yellow-tinged, marigolds, sunflowers, wall-flowers, a stray tulip, the gaudiest they knew. These specks of brightness by the dingy walls and grey thatch and whitened turf, for the chalk was but an inch under, came of instinct on that southern slope, as hot Spain flaunts a yellow flag.
Six or eight children were about. One sat crying in the midst of the path, so unconscious under the wrong he had endured as not to see them, and they had to step right over his red head. Some stared at them with unchecked rudeness; one or two curtseyed or tugged at their forelocks. The happiest of all was sitting on the breastwork (of dry earth) eating a small turnip from which he had cut the dirt and rind with a rusty table-knife. As they passed he grinned and pushed the turnip in their faces, as much as to say, “Have a bite.” Two or three women looked out after they had gone by, and then some one cried, “Baa!” making a noise like a sheep, at which the girl who led them flushed up, and walked very quickly, with scorn and rage, and hatred flashing in her eye. It was a taunt. Her father was in gaol for lamb-stealing. Her name was Aholibah, and they taunted her by dwelling on the last syllable.
The path went to the top of the hill, and round under a red barn, and now they could see the village, of which these detached cottages were an outpost, scattered over the slope, and on the plain on the other side of the coombe, a quarter of a mile distant.
“There’s the windmill,” said the girl, pointing to the tower-like building. “You go tow-ward he. He be on the road. Then you turn to the right till you comes to the handing-post. Then you go to the left, and that’ll take ’ee straight whoam.”
“Thank you,” said Bevis. “I know now; it’s not far to Big Jack’s house. Please have this sixpence,” and he gave her the coin, which he had unconsciously held in his hand ever since he had taken it out to pay for the gooseberries. It was all he had; he could not keep his money.
She took it, but her eyes were on him, and not on the money; she would have liked to have kissed him. She watched them till she saw they had got into the straight road, and then went back, but not past the cottages.
They found the road very long, very long and dull, and dusty and empty, except that there was a young labourer—a huge fellow—lying across a flint heap asleep, his mouth open and the flies thick on his forehead. Bevis pulled a spray from the hedge and laid it gently across his face. Except for the sleeping labourer, the road was vacant, and every step they took they went slower and slower. There were no lions here, or monstrous pythons, or anything magic.
“We shall never get home,” said Mark.