CHAPTER XI 



HAMPSHIRE AN UMBRELLA MAN 



A BEGGAR is a rich man on some of these August days, 

 especially one I know, whom first I met some Augusts 

 ago now. A fine Sunday afternoon had sprinkled the 

 quiet and thinly-peopled land with black-dressed men and 

 white-dressed women, the older married couples and their 

 trains of children keeping chiefly to the roads and most 

 straightforward paths, the younger, with one child or 

 none, choosing rather the green lanes, while the lovers 

 and the boys found out tall hedge-sides and the footpaths 

 across which more than one year's growth of hazel had 

 spread, so that the shortest of the maids must stoop. 

 Many showers following a dry season made miles of the 

 country as clean and fragrant as a garden. Honeysuckle 

 and privet were in every hedge with flowers that bring a 

 thrill of summer bridals on their scent. The brisk wind 

 was thymy from the Downs. The ragwort was in its 

 glory; it rose tall as a man in one straight leap of dark- 

 foliaged stem, and then crowned itself in the boldest and 

 most splendid yellows derived from a dark golden disc 

 and almost lemon rays; it was as if Apollo had come 

 down to keep the flocks of a farmer on these chalk hills 

 and his pomp had followed him out of the sky. A few 

 birds still sang; one lark now and then, a cirl-bunting 

 among the topmost haws of a thorn, chiffchaffs in the 

 bittersweet and hazel of the little copses. 



There was apparently comfort, abundance and quiet 

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