Straight, naked houses. Grey walls of houses, enclosing the wide oblong Green. Dark grey stone roofs, close-clipped lest the wind should lift them. On the Green two grey stone pillar fountains; a few wooden benches; telegraph poles. Under her window a white road curling up to the platform. Straight, naked houses, zigzagging up beside it. Down below, where the white road came from, the long grey raking bridge, guarded by a tall ash-tree.
Roddy's jabbing voice went on and on:
"I used to think Mamma was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more. She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how awful it is for us."
She hated Roddy when he said things like that about Mamma.
"I don't suppose the little lamb thought about it at all. Or if she did she thought we'd like it."
She didn't want to listen to Roddy's grumbling. She wanted to look and look, to sniff up the clear, sweet, exciting smell of the fields.
The roofs went criss-crossing up the road—straight—slant—straight. They threw delicate violet-green shadows on to the sage-green field below. That long violet-green pillar was the shadow of the ash-tree by the bridge.
The light came from somewhere behind the village, from a sunset you couldn't see. It made the smooth hill fields shine like thin velvet, stretched out, clinging to the hills.
"Oh, Roddy, the light's different. Different from Ilford. Look—"
"I've been looking for five weeks," Roddy said. "You haven't, that's all. I was excited at first."