Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt: ... watch her face while you were fiddling. You took all the spirit out of her. She had been anxious to teach me her scraping, squeaking instrument, but I declined with thanks. I can't bear the sound of it. Gelert always howls dreadfully the moment she begins, and I feel as if I want to howl too! I'm made to strum on the piano for an hour every day, but I hate it. It's all nonsense! What's the use of learning a thing you don't care about? The only music I really like to hear is a view halloo or a good tally-ho!" As the summer went on, Mildred thought the scenery at Castleford seemed to grow more and more beautiful. The ripened corn gave a golden touch to the fields, the moorlands were ablaze with purple heather, and on the hillside slopes the Pg 152 bracken was beginning to turn to gorgeous shades of ochre and sienna brown. She and Violet took many walks with Sir Darcy round the estate, and she was beginning now to know the neighbourhood quite well. One day Sir Darcy, who was busy talking with a keeper, left the two girls to rest on a stone at the head of the precipice which bounded the lake. "How lovely it looks!" said Mildred. "I think it is the most exquisite view I've ever seen in my life." Violet gazed thoughtfully at the purple-grey lake lying below them, the encircling woods in all the glory of their summer green seeming richer in contrast with the peaks of the craggy hills behind. By the water's edge stretched lush meadows, the village and the church could be seen in the blue distance, and close at hand rose the turrets and chimneys of The Towers. Violet did not very often think about such things, but just then a verse came into her head which she had sung in the psalms at church the Sunday before, and which had caught her attention at the time
