Hillside something had always been lacking--she could hardly have told
what, but somehow, she had never loved the place itself. It had never
been quite 'home' to her, and never could be.

"I expect you're tired, dear, ain't you?" the woman beside her asked in a
kindly voice. The face Mona turned to her was pale, but it was with
feeling, not tiredness.

"Oh, no," she cried, hardly knowing what she felt, or how to put it into
words. "I was a little while ago--but I ain't now. I--I don't think I
could ever feel tired while I could see that!" She pointed towards the
stretch of blue water, with the setting sun making a road of gold right
across it and into the heaven that joined it.

The woman smiled sadly. "Are you so fond of it as all that! I wish I
was. I can't abide it--it frightens me. I never look at it if I can help
it. It makes me feel bad."

"And it makes me feel good," thought Mona, but she was shy of saying so.
"I think I should be ashamed to do anything mean when I was in sight of
the sea," she added to herself. And then the old horse drew up suddenly,
and she saw that they had actually reached their journey's end.

As she stepped down from the van and stood alone in the inn yard, where
John Darbie always unloaded, and put up his horse and van, Mona for the
first time felt shy and nervous. She and her new mother were really
strangers to each other. They had met but once, and that for only a
little while.

"And p'raps we shan't get on a bit," thought Mona. "P'raps she's very
particular, and will be always scolding!" and she felt very miserable.
And then, as she looked about her, and found that no one, as far as she
could tell, had come to meet her, she began to feel very forlorn, and
ill-used too. All the sharp little unkind remarks about Lucy Carne, which
had fallen from Granny Barnes' lips, came back to her mind.

"I do think somebody might have come to meet me!" she said to herself, and
being tired, and nervous, and a little bit homesick for granny, the tears
rushed to her eyes. Hastily diving in her pocket for her handkerchief,
her fingers touched her purse, and she suddenly realised that she had not
paid John Darbie his fare! With a thrill and a blush at her own
forgetfulness, she hurried back to where he was busy unloading his van.
He had already taken down the pigs and some bundles of peasticks, and a
chair which wanted a new cane seat, and was about to mount to the top to
drag down