It is a fine summer’s afternoon, and Jane is six and a half. It is a wash day, and Dame Bushell is scrubbing grass stains from small white dresses. Jane is bored. Cassandra is away, staying with their cousins, the Coopers, but today is the day she is due back, and Papa has taken a hired chaise to Andover to fetch her home. She grasps little Charles by his fat little hand and pulls him along on his sturdy little legs. 
They slip out of the house, crunch down the gravel drive and go out of the gate. Maybe nobody even notices that they are gone.
The lane is pitted with cart grooves, but dusty and dry. 
They march past the tithe barn, past the cottages, past the unblinking stares of the ragged children, past the barking village dogs.  Right at the crossroads. She’s pretty sure she knows the way. The lane curves on endlessly. Their small legs make slow progress. The light filters down through leaves that touch overhead. 
Charles stops to pick blackberries, but Jane is inexorable, resolute in pursuit of her sister, and he panics at her diminishing figure and scurries to catch up. 
The children gain the Deane Gate Inn. This is as far as Jane has ever been before, when they go to collect the letters. The inn sign creaks in the summer breeze. A man is wrestling a stone from a horse’s hoof. “Is this the way to Andover?” “Aye, it is, miss.”
So the children turn westward, towards the sun that keeps slipping closer to the horizon.
They are passed by a farm cart so laden with hay that the driver cannot even offer them a ride. They meet a man on a mule with a chicken under his arm. He drops the reins to tip his hat, graciously.  The mailcoach thunders into view. They pin themselves to the hedge, well clear of the galloping hooves.
Jane peers into the sunset. 
Is that a chaise? 
Is it? 
It isn’t. 
Until it is! “Papa! Papa! Did we surprise you?” And they are joyously scooped up and deposited on the seat—hands clasped, cheeks pink, happy and excited for the six-mile ride back home.