Chapter 28 For Aurora





Part I

The Relapse into Barbarism




CHAPTER I

THE GREAT FOREST


The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were
left to themselves a change began to be visible. It became green
everywhere in the first spring, after London ended, so that all the
country looked alike.

The meadows were green, and so was the rising wheat which had been sown,
but which neither had nor would receive any further care. Such arable
fields as had not been sown, but where the last stubble had been
ploughed up, were overrun with couch-grass, and where the short stubble
had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it. So that there was no place
which was not more or less green; the footpaths were the greenest of
all, for such is the nature of grass where it has once been trodden on,