98 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



aloud in a crowded carriage, and utterly regardless of 

 others, about private matters. 



A trim shop assistant pretended to read about the 

 cricket, but listened, and could not conceal his cold con- 

 tempt for men so sunken as to give themselves away 

 like this. 



A dark, thin, genial, pale-faced puritan clerk looked 

 pitifully — with some twinkles of superiority that asked 

 for recognition from his fellow-passengers — at these chil- 

 dren, for as such he regarded them, and would not wholly 

 condemn. 



Others occasionally jerked out a glance or rolled a 

 leaderless eye or rustled a newspaper without losing the 

 dense veil over their individuality that made them tombs, 

 monuments, not men. 



One sat gentle, kindly, stupidly envying these two their 

 spirited free talk, their gestures, the hearty draughts of life 

 which they seemed to have taken. 



All were botanists who had heard and spoken words 

 but had no sense of the beauty and life of the flower 

 because fate had refused, or education destroyed, the gift 

 of liberty and of joy. 



SURREY. 



Then I saw a huge silence of meadows, of woods, and 

 beyond these, of hills that raised two breasts of empurpled 

 turf into the sky; and, above the hills, one mountain of 

 cloud that beamed as it reposed in the blue as in a sea. 

 The white cloud buried London with a requiescat in pace. 



I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London 

 as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin 



