When on the fifth day the postman left nothing but a bill for
little Gyp's shoes, and a note from Aunt Rosamund at Harrogate, where
she had gone with Winton for the annual cure, Gyp's heart sank to the
depths. Was this the end? And, with a blind, numb feeling, she wandered
out into the wood, where the fall of the pine-needles, season after
season, had made of the ground one soft, dark, dust-coloured bed, on
which the sunlight traced the pattern of the pine boughs, and ants
rummaged about their great heaped dwellings.
Gyp went along till she could see no outer world for the grey-brown
tree-stems streaked with gum-resin; and, throwing herself down on her
face, dug her elbows deep into the pine dust. Tears, so rare with her,
forced their way up, and trickled slowly to the hands whereon her chin
rested. No good--crying! Crying only made her ill; crying was no relief.
She turned over on her back and lay motionless, the sunbeams warm on her
cheeks. Silent here, even at noon! The sough of the calm sea could not
reach so far; the flies were few; no bird sang. The tall bare pine stems
rose up all round like columns in a temple roofed with the dark boughs
and sky. Cloud-fleeces drifted slowly over the blue. There should be
peace--but in her heart there was none!
A dusky shape came padding through the trees a little way off,
another--two donkeys loose from somewhere, who stood licking each
other's necks and noses.
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