A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 241 



docks, scabious, seeded thistles lovely but deso- 

 late. I never carry my feud with the weeds beyond 

 my own hedges; once over the bounds, all the 

 growths which within the sacred ground cause 

 an almost instinctive action of the trenchant spud, 

 are safe ; I recognise their nobility, their admirable 

 lustiness of growth and procreation. For all that, 

 this field, with its dead wiry grass full of hard- 

 heads and five-foot thistles, is a blot on the pastoral 

 landscape. 



The grey cloud slowly draws off, leaving a shining 

 noon of tempered warmth and soft light. Spaces of 

 oblivion, perhaps, shorten the time ; for I hear Lucy 

 Sayers astir in the house before I had thought of 

 dinner. I imagine that she has hurried up the hill 

 from Church, her mind with the pots and the oven, 

 which indeed I fear may have even come across the 

 Psalms or the sermon. Lucy lives wholly in her work ; 

 for sure she will die in it. Two summers ago she was 

 very ill ; and one afternoon it came to be understood 

 in the close dark room (it was haytime and cloudless 

 weather) that Lucy would die. She has no kin to 

 trouble about ; but she went over all her world of 

 kitchen-things told us where such a thing lay how 

 there was one custard-cup broken, and that the black 



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