"I met her one day in the Strand. I'd had nothing to eat all day. I was almost fainting, and she took me into a public-house and gave me a sausage."
The train began to slacken speed, and William said, "This is Peckham."
They handed up their tickets, and passed into the air of an irregular little street--low disjointed shops and houses, where the tramcars tinkled through a slacker tide of humanity than the Londoners were accustomed to.
"This way," said Esther. "This is the way to the Rye."
"Not far from the Rye. Do you know East Dulwich?"
"Mrs. Lewis (that's the woman who looks after him) lives at East Dulwich, but it ain't very far. I always gets out here. I suppose you don't mind a quarter of an hour's walk."
"Not when I'm with you," William replied gallantly, and he followed her through the passers-by.
The Rye opened up like a large park, beginning in the town and wending far away into a country prospect. At the Peckham end there were a dozen handsome trees, and under them a piece of artificial water where boys were sailing toy boats, and a poodle was swimming. Two old ladies in black came out of a garden full of hollyhocks; they walked towards a seat and sat down in the autumn landscape. And as William and Esther pursued their way the Rye seemed to grow longer and longer. It opened up into a vast expanse full of the last days of cricket; it was charming with slender trees and a Japanese pavilion quaintly placed on a little mound. An upland background in gradations, interspaced with villas, terraces, and gardens, and steep hillside, showing fields and hayricks, brought the Rye to a picturesque and abrupt end.
"But it ain't nearly so big as Chester race-course. A regular cockpit of a place is the Chester course; and not every horse can get round it."
Turning to the right and leaving the Rye behind them, they ascended a long, monotonous, and very ugly road composed of artificial little houses, each set in a portion of very metallic garden. These continued all the way to the top of a long hill, straggling into a piece of waste ground where there were some trees and a few rough cottages. A little boy came running towards them, stumbling over the cinder heaps and the tin canisters with which the place was strewn, and William felt that that child was his.