"'Let us go hence, my shoes, he will not see,'" I parodied gloomily to myself as I tramped along that lane.
Meanwhile Vic, cheerful as the morning, was pointing out to us what she considered the objects of interest as we went along.
"See that big white place over there in the trees? That's the hospital," Vic told us, pointing. "There's two o' the boys coming out now—see? This is the turning off to the town—at least, what they call a town. Mouldy! No pictures, nothing; still, why go to theatres when you can see life?
"You ought to have been here for the concert at the hospital last week. It was all right. They wanted to give it again at our hut; but Miss Easton and Mr. Rhys said 'No fear.' A shame, wasn't it? Never mind; they are going to have another, some time. See that hill to the right where that smoke's going up? That's where our girls work at the trees. And those corrugated iron roofs you can just see over there—that's the camp for the German prisoners, and——"
Vic broke off to ask if she were running us off our legs. Certainly she was a quicker walker than either of us. But I enjoyed the tramp through this heavenly air as much as I ever could enjoy anything again, I thought, in this Harry-less world.
So far, I thought "going on the land" was not so bad after all. Eating delicious bread and butter out-of-doors on a glorious morning at an hour when, in London, I should still have been a-bed! Not at all bad. It might even do a little to take my thoughts off the wound that could not help aching for ever.
And besides this, I was conscious that in the whole air of the place there was something as distinctive, as familiar as in the taste of the farmhouse bread and butter. It was a something that I had not savoured since I was a growing girl....
Other country landscapes that I had since seen had always made me feel the lack of this "something." ...
That these others were often, in a different way, as beautiful, I did admit. I appreciated their dignity, the prosperity of their wide, flat lands. They had so much that was to be admired, but not——
Ah! Not the "flavour" of Wales!