At four precisely she sat down with her father,
and then said that she was going up as far as Helpholme after dinner.
Helpholme was a solitary farmhouse in another parish, on the border of
the moor, and Mr. Woolsworthy asked her whether he should accompany her.
'Do, papa,' she said, 'if you are not too tired.' And yet she had
thought how probable it might be that she should meet John Broughton on
her walk. And so it was arranged; but, just as dinner was over, Mr.
Woolsworthy remembered himself.
'Gracious me,' he said, 'how my memory is going! Gribbles, from
Ivybridge, and old John Poulter, from Bovey, are coming to meet here by
appointment. You can't put Helpholme off till tomorrow?'
Patience, however, never put off anything, and therefore at six o'clock,
when her father had finished his slender modicum of toddy, she tied on
her hat and went on her walk. She started forth with a quick step, and
left no word to say by which route she would go. As she passed up along
the little lane which led towards Oxney Colne she would not even look to
see if he was coming towards her; and when she left the road, passing
over a stone stile into a little path which ran first through the upland
fields, and then across the moor ground towards Helpholme, she did not
look back once, or listen for his coming step.
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