They came finally to a gap in the hedge on the left-hand side of the road where there was a five-barred gate.
“This way,” Miss Honey said, and she opened the gate and led Matilda through and closed it again.
They were now walking along a narrow lane that was no more than a rutted cart-track.
There was a high hedge of hazel on either side and you could see clusters of ripe brown nuts in their green jackets.
The squirrels would be collecting them all very soon, Miss Honey said, and storing them away carefully for the bleak months ahead.
“You mean you live down here?” Matilda asked. “I do,” Miss Honey replied, but she said no more.
Matilda had never once stopped to think about where Miss Honey might be living.
She had always regarded her purely as a teacher, a person who turned up out of nowhere and taught at school and then went away again.
Do any of us children, she wondered, ever stop to ask ourselves where our teachers go when school is over for the day?
Do we wonder if they live alone, or if there is a mother at home or a sister or a husband?
“Do you live all by yourself, Miss Honey?” she asked. “Yes,” Miss Honey said. “Very much so.”
They were walking over the deep sun-baked mud-tracks of the lane
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