She stared over the pony's ears at the gay spring landscape.
"Those are the Dene fields," said Alicia, following her glance. "There are two Denes, you know--Dene Village and Dene Fields. There's a couple of miles between them. We are in the hollow, where the road dips, at the foot of Witch Hill."
Alicia flourished her whip at the sky-line. The fields were spread over the hillside in sections of chocolate and magenta and silver-green, with here and again a parti-coloured patch, where oats and dandelions, pimpernel and sky-blue flax choked and strangled on an ash-heap. From the slopes Witch Hill lifted a brow of blank white chalk, crowned and draped in woodland, lying against pillows of cloud, for all the world like a hag abed, knees hunched, and patchwork quilt drawn up to ragged eyebrows. Round her neck the road wound like a silver riband; looped, dipped, disappeared, for two unfenced miles--to flash into view but a parrot's flight away, and swerve, with a steep little rush, round a house with French windows thatched in yellow jessamine.
"What a good name! Who was she before she was turned into that?" She stopped, flushing. Alicia would think her stupid.
"Do you like fairy tales? You've come to the right place--the country-side's full of them. There's a fairy fort--Roman I suppose, really, and a haunted barn out beyond Dene Compton, besides Witch Hill and the Witch Wood just behind our house. There's a story, of course. I don't know it--you must ask Roger. He's always picking up stories."
"My nephew, Roger Lumsden. Hasn't Elsbeth----?"
"He's away just now. Look, now you can see the house properly."
"Behind the hill?" Alwynne had caught sight of a group of buildings crowning a secondary slope.
"No, no--that's the school, Dene Compton."
"A school?" Alwynne screwed up her eyes to look at it. "What a big place! Girls or boys?"
"Oh! A board school!" Alwynne's interest flagged.
"Scarcely!" Alicia laughed. "Haven't you heard of Dene Compton? And you a school-mistress!"
"The thin end of the co-educational wedge. It's unique--or was, till a few years ago. There are several now, dotted about England. You ladies' seminaries should be trembling in your shoes."
"Boys and girls! What a mad idea! Yes, I believe Clare--I believe I did hear something about it. It's all cranks and simple lifers and socialists though, isn't it?"