What the gardener called the gravel path was black earth, moss-grown.
Very pretty, but Betty thought it shabby.

It was soft and cool, though, to the feet, and the dust of the white
road sparkled like diamond dust in the sunlight.

She crossed the road and passed through the swing gate into the park,
where the grass was up for hay, with red sorrel and buttercups and
tall daisies and feathery flowered grasses, their colours all tangled
and blended together like ravelled ends of silk on the wrong side of
some great square of tapestry. Here and there in the wide sweep of
tall growing things stood a tree--a may-tree shining like silver, a
laburnum like fine gold. There were horse-chestnuts whose spires of
blossom shewed like fat candles on a Christmas tree for giant
children. And the sun was warm and the tree shadows black on the
grass.

Betty told herself that she hated it all. She took the narrow
path--the grasses met above her feet--crossed the park, and reached
the rabbit warren, where the chalk breaks through the thin dry turf,
and the wild thyme grows thick.

A may bush, overhanging a little precipice of chalk, caught her eye. A
wild rose was tangled round it. It was, without doubt, the most
difficult composition within sight.

"I will sketch that," said Eighteen, confidently.

For half an hour she busily blotted and washed and niggled. Then she
became aware that she no longer had the rabbit warren to herself.