"We could go back a little way to meet her," suggested Gabrielle, "and then whatever happens, we shall be together."
"Good egg! What luck you're Lower School Head, Gabby! If it were me I should have to ask leave, and probably get it refused too," Noreen whispered, for Miss Lambton was in the brake with them, and she was young and great on discipline, and was known to disapprove of some among the many concessions made to Gabrielle's exalted position. It was on the cards that, if she heard the plan, there would come an authoritative order to keep all together and not exert the privileges of Head of the Lower School.
The drive was a long one, but no one in the whole school thought so for an instant. Besides the grand excitement of the match at the far end, the drive itself was so full of interest.
After passing the station the long procession of brakes kept to the straight raised road for a couple of miles only, then began to wind down on to the broad road which spanned the Deeps.
That road in itself spelt romance to the Redlands girls. It was still christened _Malfrey Street_, though that Roger Malfrey, who had owned the chief interest in the flourishing town and harbour that had once made Deeping Royal a famous name in the region of the great Wash, and had sunk a fortune and years and high hopes in the attempt to make a lasting road across the undrained fens, had gone--where effort that has failed may wear a brighter crown than fulfilment.
Now, centuries later, sand and shoals had silted up the harbour, and of the old greatness of Deeping Royal nothing remained but the magnificent twin churches of St. Philip and St. James (once hardly able to contain all the worshippers of the place), and open fields that carried strange names--"Fishmarket Field," "Mummers' Square," "Gold-Heart Street," and so on. Of Deeping Royal proper there remained a straggling fishing village of, perhaps, five hundred souls.
Malfrey Street ran in a line with the river for three-quarters of its length. A quarter of a mile perhaps of Green Deeps separated the brimming, bankless river from the causeway that lifted itself from the grass even as the river seemed trying to do. And both seemed making straight as a die for the sea. Then, when Redlands was some seven miles behind, river and road appeared to change their minds, and, twisting sharply, ran parallel with the flat, dreary shore for more than two miles, only a narrow strip of shingle dividing the sand from the road. On such a day as this the road was soft with the sand that blew over the shingle and settled on it, only to be whirled away and flung among the coarse grass that still struggled to grow between river and road--fighting for existence with sea-pinks and purple madder.