Tib had a walk every day, he expected it; but, used to running wild on Hampstead Heath, he had grown bored with being marched round the lanes on a lead — and for that matter, Bet had grown bored with it too. On being applied to, Christine Barnet suggested the wood. It belonged, she said, to the Westovers, but had always been open to the village — the squire was like that. Her gran had done her courting there, and so had many others, and the children still picked the primroses to decorate the church at Easter. The idea of going to the wood excited Bet. She could see it from her bedroom window. Only a field away from the Rectory garden, it crouched along the rim of the hill, witchy, mysterious, its ancient, serpentine edge curling in and out between the chocolate-coloured furrows of the field that bordered it. It was a cold, still, April day — nearer winter than spring — when they set out, and Bet was just a little nervous by the time they had crossed the field and found the mouth of the bridle path Christine had told her about.
