Do n't wait tea for me . I probably wo n't be back till dark . I 've only four more days to stay and I want to make the most of them . '' Nancy wandered far and wide in her rambles that afternoon . When she had filled her jug she still roamed about with delicious aimlessness . Once she found herself in a wood lane skirting a field wherein a man was mowing hay . The man was Peter Wright . Nancy walked faster when she discovered this , with never a roving glance , and presently the green , ferny depths of the maple woods swallowed her up . From old recollections , she knew that she was on Peter Morrison 's land , and calculated that if she kept straight on she would come out where the old Morrison house used to be . Her calculations proved correct , with a trifling variation . She came out fifty yards south of the old deserted Morrison house , and found herself in the yard of the Wright farm ! Passing the house -- the house where she had once dreamed of reigning as mistress -- Nancy 's curiosity overcame her . The place was not in view of any other near house . She deliberately went up to it intending -- low be it spoken -- to peep in at the kitchen window . But , seeing the door wide open , she went to it instead and halted on the step , looking about her keenly . The kitchen was certainly pitiful in its disorder . The floor had apparently not been swept for a fortnight . On the bare deal table were the remnants of Peter 's dinner , a meal that could not have been very tempting at its best . `` What a miserable place for a human being to live in ! '' groaned Nancy .
`` Look XXXXX the ashes on that stove !
From On about at for in of till to with