So events had been put in train; undoubtedly she had made moves towards securing the cottage.

Oh! if only they had the three thousand pounds!

The Vale was a cluster of old houses on the Heath, near a large pond where swans sailed and little boys fished, sitting among the thick stems of the water willows. The houses stood amid tall, old trees; and the dark branches were printed against the faded, yellow weatherboarding of the houses; blue smoke came calmly out of their midst. A road shaped like a Y ran down into the Vale. It was so steep that in frosty spells, Celia said, horses could not get down it. It did not look very steep today, but no doubt Celia was right; she and her mother had spent last winter in the Cottage, and she ought to know.

The right branch of the Y-road went down to the pond, past the only six slummy houses in the Vale; the left branch went past the Cottage and led to a steep part of the Heath, where may and lime trees grew.

The Vale had no tiny general shop, because it lay only ten minutes’ climb from Enbury High Street, but otherwise it was a village, pleasantly isolated and proud of itself, its ramshackle charms, its two large houses and old gardens, and the fact that Leigh Hunt had lived in one of the houses; but there were heated local arguments about which one.

The Vale was a delightful place in which to live; and not the least delightful part of it to Sophia, the Londoner, was the fact that London lay spread away, away, as far as the eye could sweep, below the Vale; looking between the gentle trees like a lulled monster in a vision, with half its cruelty gone. She never grew tired of looking at its smoky beauty. She did not want to live down there; she enjoyed escaping every evening from the monster and climbing her green hill of refuge, but she delighted in its unending variety, power and pure romance, and loved to lose herself in a maze of dreams about places to which she had never been, such as Alperton, Stoke Newington, Highbury and New Cross Gate. She knew, of course, that if she did ever go to these places she would find there trams, fried fish shops, big cinemas and small newsagent tobacconists, but that did not make the places any less romantic to her.

The Cottage was wedged between a house that was just a little bigger than itself, and somebody’s back yard.

It was an extremely small cottage, whose door, which was painted blue and was half a window, opened directly save for a worn little stone step on to the street. There was another window to the left of the door, and two windows on the second floor above; and that was all. The cottage was only two storeys high, and it was painted a mild shade of yellow, which had deepened in fog and rain to the hue of parchment.