still looking over the blind, sharp and angry because they wouldn't let
her go.

Aunt Lavvy said, "We couldn't take Charlotte. It excited her too much
last time." As if she knew what you were thinking.

The wagonette stopped by the railway-crossing at Manor Park, and they got
out. Mamma told Mr. Parish to drive round to the Leytonstone side and
wait for them there at the big gates. They wanted to walk through the
cemetery and see what was to be seen.

Beyond the railway-crossing a muddy lane went along a field of coarse
grass under a hedge of thorns and ended at a paling. Roddy whispered
excitedly that they were in Wanstead Flats. The hedge shut off the
cemetery from the flats; through thin places in the thorn bushes you
could see tombstones, very white tombstones against very dark trees.
There was a black wooden door in the hedge for you to go in by. The lane
and the thorn bushes and the black door reminded Mary of something she
had seen before somewhere. Something frightening.

When they got through the black door there were no tombstones. What
showed through the hedge were the tops of high white pillars standing up
among trees a long way off. They had come into a dreadful, bare,
clay-coloured plain, furrowed into low mounds, as if a plough had gone
criss-cross over it.

You saw nothing but mounds. Some of them were made of loose earth; some
were patched over with rough sods that gaped in a horrible way. Perhaps
if you looked through the cracks you would see down into the grave where
the coffin was. The mounds had a fresh, raw look, as if all the people in