To see me old and prim, with my cap and little checked shawl, you'd
never think that I was once one of the two prettiest girls on all
the South Downs. But I was, and my cousin Lilian was the other. We
lived at Whitecroft together at our uncle's. He was a well-to-do
farmer, as well-to-do as a farmer could be in such times as those,
and on such land as that.

Whenever I hear people say 'home,' it's Whitecroft I think of, with
its narrow windows and thatch roof and the farm-buildings about it,
and the bits of trees all bent one way with the wind from the sea.

Whitecroft stands on a shoulder of the Downs, and on a clear day you
can see right out to sea and over the hollow where Felscombe lies
cuddled down close and warm, with its elms and its church, and its
bright bits of gardens. They are sheltered from the sea wind down
there, but there's nothing to break the wing of it as it rolls
across the Downs on to Whitecroft; and of a night Lilian and I used
to lie and listen to the wind banging the windows, and know that the
chimneys were rocking over our heads, and feel the house move to and
fro with the strength of the wind like as if it was the swing of a
cradle.

Lilian and I had come there, little things, and uncle had brought us
up together, and we loved each other like sisters until that
happened, and this is the first time I have told a human soul about
it; and if being sorry can pay for things--well, but I'm afraid
there are some things nothing can pay for.

It was one wild windy night, when, if you should open the door an