HE worked in a London office amid a maddening rattle of typewriters, and because she knew French and shorthand as well as the ways of her machine, her weekly wage was two pounds ten, which is high for a shorthand typist. Hester Ling was her name, and any ordinary day, if you stood on the kerb of Bedford Street and looked up to a first-floor window, there you might see her stooping over her machine, and, when she paused, as pretty a face as was ever immured within an office. This is a picture of Hester on week-days and at her work. Towards six o'clock it ended, and out she would come, marching with that long stride of hers into the Strand, and if you followed her—which I hope you wouldn't—you might see her pass under the new Admiralty Arch, and so through St. James's Park and past Victoria to Chelsea. St. James's Park always attracted her, because of its lake, its waterfowl, and its sunsets. There she could forget all about typewriting, and be the self that came back to her over the week-end. In spite of her urban occupations, it was a country self. Her father had been a doctor in rural Norfolk. Years ago he had died, leaving very little money, so Hester had to turn to and earn her living. Yet, though tied to the little Chelsea flat and the big office in Bedford Street, she never forgot the country, and gave it every week-end she could spare; and if a Bank Holiday were attached to that week-end, she had Saturday afternoon and Sunday and Monday—long enough to forget London, and the feel of pavements, and the loss of her beloved stars.
It was the Saturday afternoon before Whit Monday, and Hester had indulged herself, perhaps because the tickets were cheaper over the Whitsuntide, or perhaps because there was the extra day. She had gone some sixty odd miles out of London this time, with no luggage but her hand-bag. She did not quite know where she was going to sleep, nor did she care. Everything must be clean and simple and cheap; that was the one rule she obeyed. The rest she left to chance and her own good fortune. Usually she hit on some remote farmhouse where the woman was only too glad to have her. A new face was a new face, and eighteenpence for bed and breakfast was money found. And Hester gave no trouble, and was quite ready to help with the extra work she made. She knew farmhouses and farm-wives all round London, and especially a Mrs. Fukes, of Cherry Corner, where she had already stayed more than a dozen times. From Cherry Corner you could reach woodland, downland, and most other kind of land afoot, and even the sea, if you borrowed Mrs. Fukes's bicycle, which she was always willing to lend Hester, and make no extra charge.
To-day, however, Miss Ling had gone far beyond the radius of Mrs. Fukes and Cherry Corner. At four o'clock she had stepped out of the train and found herself in a cathedral city she had long meant to explore. She loved these old places as much as the open country; like natural objects, they had grown and spread, and might pass into decay. Delightful to the eye was this old city, and Hester asked no more. She could people it and give it life; the natives did not matter, nor even the Dean and Chapter. She had dreamt the late afternoon away in a delicious solitude. And then she had marched off into the sunset, watching the silhouettes of trees against the glow—the firs were wonderful—and a sky of which the edge was one long rhapsody of colour. It had moved her more than evensong heard in the cathedral, though the screen had dimmed from stone to silver, a carven masterwork that left her breathless, though the organ had brooded and become a voice, and through clerestory and nave the broken lights had joined with the stained glass to make a miracle.
"The cathedral is the greatest thing in the world, and yet the world is greater far than the cathedral; and I suppose I'm a heathen, anyhow," soliloquised Hester. And then she stopped, for here was a board that said "Apartments," and a lesser board that said "Milk: 1d. a glass." They were nailed to a tree, and the tree stood in a little garden fronting the high-road. Back of it lay the house, a red-brick structure, mellow and with lichened roof. It was possibly a small farmhouse. Hester gathered this from its outbuildings, which were more extensive than would have been the case with an ordinary dwelling; and, of course, "Milk: 1d, a glass," meant cows, or, at least, a cow. It was the very place she wanted—cheap and simple, plain and rural. She would stay here overnight.
A bustling woman answered her knock.
"Bed and supper and breakfast?" said she. "That's what we're here for." She was as cheery as a farm wife in a play.
"And the price?"