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Beyond these, a little collection of thatched roofs, and grey church, and yellow stacks, made up the village of Wavebury; after that, downs again as far as the eye could reach.
Notwithstanding this the people of Wavebury did not hold the memory of the Truslows in much veneration; they had been "a bad lot," it was rumoured, and the old manor-house, which still bore their name, was looked on with suspicion as a place which had possibly witnessed many a deed of darkness.
She had heard her mother say much the same thing a great many times since it had been settled that she was to go to Wavebury and take care of Mrs Roy's baby, and she was now quite used to hearing that it was a "lonesome" place, though she did not know what it meant.
Small and needy farmers had been its only tenants for years, but when Mr and Mrs Roy came to Wavebury they took a fancy to the old house, and arranged to hire five rooms in it.
One bright morning, when she had been at Wavebury for nearly two months, she was walking up and down near the house with the baby in her arms, waiting for Mrs Roy, who had carefully warned her meanwhile not to go out of the sunshine or to stand still, and to keep within sight of the windows.
Biddy peered from under the edge of the umbrella and could now make out that they were in a sort of lane, for instead of open country there was a hedge on each side of the road. They must be near Wavebury now, she thought, though she could see no houses or lights or people; her fingers were cramped and cold, and she could not cling on much longer either to her umbrella or Mr Roy's cloak.
Biddy soon knew this way to church very well; and amongst the many strange customs at Wavebury, she thought it curious that there should be two services every day, though the congregation was seldom more than two or three in number. "Whenever you like to go to church, Biddy," said her mistress, "I will always take the baby."
So the Truslow ghost vanished from Wavebury, and very soon from most people's memories also, but Biddy had not forgotten it when she was quite an old woman. "The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by." Carlyle.
Receiving it, she flattened it carefully out on the table with the palm of her hand before the admiring eyes of Mrs Jones, and, pointing to each word, read out slowly and loudly the directions for Biddy's journey. "She gets out, yer see, at Canley station. That's as far as the rail goes. There she'll be met and druv over to Wavebury eight miles, Mrs Roy said."
Biddy did not feel very clear about it at the end of the explanation, though she was conscious that he "talked very kind," and she fell back on the thought that after all it was the country, and quite different from London. But this difference was "borne in upon her" most strongly of all when she went for the first time to the downs which closely surrounded Wavebury.
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