Violet Jacob > Irresolute Catherine

110 IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE
open road. Down below her was yet
one more pasture, and then she must emerge
on the highway and take her chance of
meeting some wayfarer who might recognise
her. She plodded on, thinking less of that
risk than of the increasing misery of drag¬
ging herself forward. A climb down a
steep hedge-grown bank would bring her
out not fifty yards from the whitewashed
walls of a toll-house. Half a mile east of
it was Losbury bridge, spanning a reach
of the river above the flat, green meadows.
She looked up and down the road as she
stood on the bank and bent back the strong
suckers in the gap she had chosen; there
was not a human creature within sight.
A white milestone was on the hither side
of the white toll and the white gates which
barred the way. The window stared to¬
wards her up the vacant thoroughfare after
the sleepless, vigilant fashion of toll-house
windows. She began to scramble down,
clinging to the tough whips of hazel; there