A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 121 



long-waisted black jacket and draggled skirt. She 

 wheeled before her an infant and an assortment of 

 miscellaneous groceries in that comprehensive vehicle 

 called a pram, and represented only too well the 

 general young-womanhood of the parish. 



I turned out of the road at Cudbridge and sauntered 

 down a woodside where no marketers came or went ; 

 and before long the gasps of the accordion died in 

 the distance and left me to the hush of the evening, 

 growing momently upon the wood. Then the night- 

 jar began his drowsy burr, answered by another and 

 yet another, until; relieving one another, they filled the 

 twilight with an unbroken, monotonous drone. Close 

 at hand, as I sat on the field-gate, small lives cricked 

 and rustled in the hedge-bank ; three fields off I could 

 hear the folded sheep munching, and the wavering 

 bleat of a lamb. Then one or two premonitory churrs, 

 and the nightingale broke out in magnificent song, 

 pealing from a sapling almost within arm's length of 

 my resting-place ; the song that never tires, as perfect 

 a delight here on the edge of Summer as when it was 

 new in the first days of April. She pours out air 

 after air, separated by a breathing-space pause ; and, 

 so far as I can judge, never repeats the same figure in 

 the quarter of an hour I listen to her. I slip away at 

 last without disturbing the diva, and lose the song 



