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gate is closed behind and we are out and moving in the lanes? There may be a little white pig running that’s escaped from a neighbour’s sty; or a waggon of loaded corn part overturned, with the corn sacks lying huge and heavy in the mud of the road; or else an old boot or a child’s ribbon—for one never knows what one’s luck will be here upon earth.
    And so with Mary; for when she happened to stare into the thick hedge thinking that a rabbit was there, Mrs. Pottle, whose bony body and thin crabbed face expressed anger, crawled out from the ditch, wherein Mary supposed, having so recently been talking to Mr. Caddy, that Mrs. Pottle had been making her bed.
    But though Mary was surprised, Dick the horse was more so, and in the excitement of his feeling at seeing Mrs. Pottle so suddenly he broke from Mary and trotted merrily up the lane in the direction of his well-known field.
    Mrs. Pottle was not alone, but what at first Mary supposed to be a man was in reality a large knotted lump of wood. And with this awkward-shaped piece of wood, that had she been naked very much resembled the lady’s own trunk, Mrs. Pottle began to beat the ground, explaining that the part of the lane that she struck was ‘Sarah Pring.’
    â€˜She be always hurting I,’ shouted Mrs. Pottle, and with every stroke she beat the road harder. When she grew a little tired with the giving of so many blows she threw the wood down and looked at Mary, who had very naturally stepped back a step or two.
    â€˜Sarah Pring do say,’ said Mrs. Pottle in a mysterious whisper, going nearer to Mary, ‘that our Esther bain’t got no clothes, only ontop.’ Mary looked up at the hill; the hill line was as naked as ever, and Mary thought that it ought to have an apron, even though a dirty one like Mrs. Pottle’s.
    Mary spoke soothingly to Mrs. Pottle; she wished to calm her.
    â€˜Little Esther be a good maid, and that I do know,’ she said feelingly; ‘and whatever badness she do give herself to, ’tain’t no naked badness.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Mrs. Pottle, somewhat quieted by Mary’s praise of her niece, ‘I do dress she nice though the poor maid be born so wicked; but thik Caddy do say that all green fields be beds and bedding in war time.’
    Mary followed the horse, that was now feeding a little way ahead of her; she was so shocked at Mrs. Pottle’s tale of how the white virtue of Esther had been muddied by Mrs. Pring’s scandalous words, that she walked slowly instead of hurrying up the hill to the mound where Simon was waiting for her.
    Mary was well aware that nothing could sting sharper than country venom when it suggested nakedness. Had any one said about her clothes what was hinted at about Esther’s, Mary would have spent many nights in bitter tears.
    As it was, she dared not lift up her eyes for some moments, because she feared that the unclothed sky might take upon it the form and semblance of Esther’s legs as Mrs. Pringrepresented them to be. When she did look up it was to behold Miss Pink, standing a little way from the horse, and looking at it as if it were the huge beast come up out of the sea that she so feared.
    Mary stood beside the horse and allowed Miss Pink to go by.
    Miss Pink, the most demure and harmless little lady in the world, with the grey shawl that she always wore round her shoulders in winter or in summer, and with shoes that went as near to being pattens as any shoe could, stood for a moment when she was gone safely by the horse and looked timidly back at Mary.
    Miss Pink’s nose was the smallest of its kind ever invented; but however small her nose was, it could always show signs of fear as well as her eyes. It showed real terror now when Miss Pink said, ‘Oh, Mary Gulliver, when I first saw the horse I thought it had the face of a lion.’ Miss Pink’s tiny nose tried to hide in the folds of her shawl.
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