She would behold peaceful inland horizons, taste the freedom of spirit and the content which the long, smooth buff-coloured roads, leading to unknown towns and unvisited country-side, so deliciously give.
She stood at the front door, in blue linen gown, white knitted jersey and white sailor hat, buttoning her tan doeskin driving-gloves, a gallant, gravely valiant young creature, beautifully unbroken as yet by any real assent to the manifold foulness of life--her faith in the nobility of human nature and human destiny still finely intact.

And that was just where her revolt against poor Theresa Bilson came in.

For Theresa broke the accepted law, being ignoble; and thereby spoiled the fair pattern, showed as a blot .-- Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa just now.

She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than reason, analyse or think.

So she settled herself on the sloping high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.
The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and pear trees weighted down by fruit.