Ernie sat with his back to the hill, his arms folded, looking across the valley to the tiny hamlets clustered round a spire, the huge black barns and clumps of wood beyond the stream, and the deep hedges running caterpillar-wise up the flank of the opposing Down.
The air was still keen and sparkling, yet full of scents rising from the fields that looked save in the Brooks brown for once and parched instead of fresh and green as of wont after being shorn of their crop.
Ernie enjoyed those scents. There was nothing like them in the East, he remembered. Was there indeed anywhere outside of England?
The lorry ran past the Dower-house in its rich old garden, the grey-shingled spire of the church opening to view at the back of the village across Parson's Tye.
They rattled under the elms at the foot of the hill and up the steep street, where the same brown spaniel lay always in the same place asking to be run over.
A jumble of houses pressed in upon them. Sudden dormer-windows peeped from unexpected roofs. Chimney-stacks would have tumbled on them but for the brilliant creeper that bound their old bricks together. While in odd corners behind the high brick path tall hollyhocks bowed as they passed.
The High Street was fuller than usual. Labourers slouched along it, tired and contented. A wain, with a pole at each corner pointing to heaven, the carter with patched corduroys and long whip plodding at the head of his team, was carrying a party of haymakers home. Under the great chestnut in the market-square a group of dusty horses stood, the sweat drying on them. Wages had been paid—the best wages of the year too: for all had worked overtime; Sunday was ahead of man and woman and beast alike; the most strenuous weeks of the year were over, and the most quiet to come.
The lorry ran swiftly down the hill, out of the village.
At the spot where a lane runs off to Littlington, it swerved suddenly to the right. Ernie, sitting on the rail, swayed over the side to look.
They were passing a girl, walking soberly along, her back to the village. Clearly she had just come from the fields, for she wore an orange-coloured turban wisped about her black hair, a long loose earth-coloured gabardine, stained with toil, and short enough to disclose the heavy boots of the agricultural worker.