Chapter 6 Surface Water 
EW scenes have ever seemed to me come- 
lier in a quiet way than the view of the 
last five hundred yards of the road I 
usually followed, in going to Mr. Smith’s 
Frimley farm-house. It might be bleak in a 
winterly north-easter, or horribly muddy in any 
wet season; yet, at whatever time of year, it 
was always half reminiscent, half suggestive, of 
autumnal colouring, autumnal serenity. 
As it was old marsh-land, not so very long ago 
reclaimed, the country lay pretty flat for a long 
way on both sides of the road. Hedgerows 
traversed it here and there—hedgerows with 
feathery-shaped trees in them—ash, oak, an 
occasional holly. But not much of all this was 
visible to a pedestrian on the road, by reason of 
the rather higher banks, hedge-topped, all along 
the way. Here and there a gap gave glimpses 
of pasture and trees or sour-looking field; but 
for the most part the straight bit of road—a 
brownish ribbon of colour—was shut in between 
its own oaks and ash trees, its own uplifted alder 
hedges. Uplifted, the hedges were, on the 
boundary banks that had been formed when the 
deep ditches on either side of the road were 
thrown out. For note the manner of it. Parting 
50 
