"He couldn't have stuck you in a rottener hole."

Gwenda raised her head.

"A hole? Why, there's no end to it. You can go for miles and miles
without meeting anybody, unless some darling mountain sheep gets up
and looks at you. It's--it's a divine place, Ally."

"Wait till you've been another five months in it. You'll be as sick as
I am."

"I don't think so. You haven't seen the moon get up over Greffington
Edge. If you had--if you knew what this place was like, you wouldn't
lie there grizzling. You wouldn't talk about punishing. You'd wonder
what you'd done to be allowed to look at it--to live in it a day. Of
course I'm not going to let on to Papa that I'm in love with it."

Mary smiled again.

"It's all very well for you," she said. "As long as you've got a moor
to walk on _you're_ all right."

"Yes. I'm all right," Gwenda said.

Her head had sunk again and rested in the hollow of her arms. Her
voice, muffled in her sleeve, came soft and thick. It died for
drowsiness.

In the extreme immobility and stillness of the three the still house