hese idiotic names.
Where is your hat? I like that duck's egg colour in your frock. There's
a button undone." And reaching up her little spidery hand, wonderfully
steady considering its age, she buttoned the top button but one of
Barbara's bodice.

"You look very blooming, my dear," she said. "How far is it to this
woman's cottage? We'll go there now."

"She wouldn't be up."

Lady Casterley's eyes gleamed maliciously.

"You tell me she's so nice," she said. "No nice unencumbered woman lies
in bed after half-past seven. Which is the very shortest way? No, Ann,
we can't take you."

Little Ann, after regarding her great-grandmother rather too intently,
replied:

"Well, I can't come, you see, because I've got to go."

"Very well," said Lady Casterley, "then trot along."

Little Ann, tightening her lips, walked to the next colony of Nemesia,
and bent over the colonists with concentration, showing clearly that she
had found something more interesting than had yet been encountered.

"Ha!" said Lady Casterley, and led on at her brisk pace towards the
avenue.

All the way down the drive she discoursed on woodcraft, glancing sharply
at the trees. Forestry--she said-like building, and all other pursuits
which required, faith and patient industry, was a lost art in this
second-hand age. She had made Barbara's grandfather practise it, so that
at Catton (her country place) and even at Ravensham, the trees were worth
looking at. Here, at Monkland, they were monstrously neglected. To have
the finest Italian cypress in the country, for example, and not take more
care of it, was a downright scandal!

Barbara listened, smiling lazily. Granny was so amusing in her energy
and precision, and her turns of speech, so deliberately homespun, as if
she--than whom none could better use a stiff and polished phrase, or the
refinements of the French language--were determined to take what
liberties she liked. To the girl, haunted still by the feeling that she
could fly, almost drunk on the sweetness of the air that summer morning,
it seemed funny that anyone should be like that. Then for a second she
saw her grandmother's face in repose, off guard, grim with anxious
purpose, as if questioning its hold on life; and in one of those flashes
of intuition which come to women--even when young and conquering like
Barbara--she felt suddenly sorry, as though she had caught sight of the
pale spectre never yet seen by her. "Poor old