THE END OF SUMMER 257 



dust of motor-cars or as additions to the property of the 

 landowner who happens to be renewing his fence ? They 

 used to be as beautiful and cool and fresh as rivers, these 

 green sisters of the white roads — illuminated borders of 

 many a weary tale. But now, lest there should be no 

 room for the dust, they are turning away from them the 

 gypsies who used to camp there for a night. The indolent 

 District Council that is anxious to get rid of its difficulties 

 — for the moment — at the expense of a neighbouring 

 district — it cares not — will send out its policemen to drive 

 away the weary horses and sleeping children from the 

 acre of common land which had hitherto been sacred — 

 to what? — to an altar, a statue, a fountain, a seat? — No! 

 to a stately notice-board; half-a-century ago the com- 

 mon of which this is a useless patch passed on easy terms 

 to the pheasant lords. The gypsies have to go. Give 

 them a pitch for the night and you are regarded as an 

 enemy of the community or perhaps even as a Socialist. 

 The gypsies shall be driven from parish to parish, and 

 finally settle down as squalid degenerate nomads in a 

 town where they lose what beauty and courage they had, 

 in adding to the difficulties of another council. Yet if 

 they were in a cage or a compound which it cost money 

 to see, hundreds would pay for a stare at their brown faces 

 and bright eyes, their hooped tents, their horses, their 

 carelessness of the crowd, and in a few years an imitation 

 of these things will be applauded in a " pageant " of the 

 town which has destroyed the reality. 



The grassy way ends with the moor at a pool beside a 



road, on one side of it six thatched cottages fenced by 



sycamore and ash and elm, on the other a grey farm and 



immense brown barn, within a long wall roofed with 



s 



