THE NEW FARM 51 



frosty morning with misgivings but &quot; Romance brought 

 in the 9.15 &quot; : the misgivings were quite vain. The 

 morning was favourable. The country walk is never 

 fuller of incident than in days when the frost is hard. 

 You may walk anywhere. The lane deepest in mud is 

 clean, and the white ice in the ruts breaks with the 

 pleasant tinkle belonging to all ice sounds. Stubble and 

 tilth and sown corn are all a highway. You may step 

 cleanly along your favourite hedgerow or take a bee-line 

 to the isolated spinney, where the first primroses open 

 and a beech stands like a cathedral, with its massive 

 pillars and fretted roof and arch and clerestory. The 

 moss beneath looks never so green as when it stands up 

 in a cushion between the red fallen leaves. I wonder 

 why Shakespeare suggested that it is in times of frost that 

 &quot; ways are foul,&quot; for it is then only that all ways are 

 paved, though we must confess that some of the paving 

 suggests rough cobbles. 



Some misgivings precede such a country walk taken 

 when an unusual frost has succeeded a period of unusual 

 warmth. Dead and starving birds and &quot; winter-proud &quot; 

 wheat cut to the quick are things to be feared. The mis 

 givings on this occasion were less seasonal ; they sprang 

 not from the clime but the human conditions. The 

 farms had been &quot;mechanised,&quot; a hideous word for a 

 thing that may be hideous. How would this homely 

 country endure the vulgar touch ? Its winding lanes are 

 cut out deep between the fields, and the hedges straggle 

 at their sweet will. Some of them are of that most grace 

 ful species known in most of the shires as &quot; bullfinches &quot;: 

 a high fringe rises above a more solid wall and gives a 

 stranger the suggestion that a wood is beginning, just 

 as the scattered trees on the route from Plymouth to 

 London gave General Botha the feeling that he was 



