turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon,
and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes,
down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad
blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind
lifting his snowy locks, and she wished the others were; but Aubrey
lamented on the heat and the length, and Leonard leant back in his
corner, past lamentation.

Down, down! The cuttings were becoming precipitous cliffs, the drag
made dismal groans; Aubrey, after a great slip forward, looking
injured, anchored himself, with his feet against the seat, by Ethel;
and Dr. Spencer was effectually wakened by an involuntary forward
plunge of his opposite neighbour. 'Can this be safe?' quoth Ethel;
'should not some of us get out?'

'Much you know of hills, you level landers!' was the answer; and just
then they were met and passed by four horses dragging up a stage
coach, after the fashion of a fly on a window-pane--a stage coach!
delightful to the old-world eyes of Dr. Spencer, recalling a faint
memory to Ethel, and presenting a perfect novelty to Aubrey.

Then came a sudden turn upon flat ground, and a short cry of wonder
broke from Aubrey. Ethel was sensible of a strange salt weedy smell,
new to her nostrils, but only saw the white-plastered, gray-roofed
houses through which they were driving; but, with another turn, the
buildings were only on one side--on the other there was a wondrous
sense of openness, vastness, freshness--something level, gray, but
dazzling; and before she could look again, the horses stopped, and
close to her, under the beetling, weather-stained white cliff, was a
low fence, and within it a verandah and a door, where stood Flora's