"
"And what did they say?"
"They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They
don't waste their smiles. D'you see that track by Gale Anstey?"
They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like
hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed
slowly along the paths that connected farm to farm.
"I've never seen so many on our land before," said Sophie. "Why
is it?"
"To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way."
"Those cow-tracks we've been using cross lots?" said Sophie
forcibly.
"Yes. Any one of 'em would cost us two thousand pounds each in
legal expenses to close."
"But we don't want to," she said.
"The whole community would fight if we did."
"But it's our land. We can do what we like."
"It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to it, and
it belongs to the people--our people they call 'em. I've been to
lunch with the English too."
They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the
next--flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and
restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue,
spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to
consider one.
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