_July 20._

Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've
talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small
extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little
that there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just
can't think. And a good thing too, perhaps.

[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]

However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a
week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.
But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward
and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.
Now, this is the cottage:

From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and
then walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either
side, and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains
and brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls
have endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes
and school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses
and crimped hair.

Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.

Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open
country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road
if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know