Mrs. Pascoe stood at the gate looking after them; stood at the gate till
the trap was round the corner; stood at the gate, looking now to the
right, now to the left; then went back to her cottage.

Soon the ponies attacked the swelling moor road with striving forelegs.
Mrs. Durrant let the reins fall slackly, and leant backwards. Her
vivacity had left her. Her hawk nose was thin as a bleached bone through
which you almost see the light. Her hands, lying on the reins in her
lap, were firm even in repose. The upper lip was cut so short that it
raised itself almost in a sneer from the front teeth. Her mind skimmed
leagues where Mrs. Pascoe's mind adhered to its solitary patch. Her mind
skimmed leagues as the ponies climbed the hill road. Forwards and
backwards she cast her mind, as if the roofless cottages, mounds of
slag, and cottage gardens overgrown with foxglove and bramble cast shade
upon her mind. Arrived at the summit, she stopped the carriage. The pale
hills were round her, each scattered with ancient stones; beneath was
the sea, variable as a southern sea; she herself sat there looking from
hill to sea, upright, aquiline, equally poised between gloom and
laughter. Suddenly she flicked the ponies so that the boy Curnow had to
swing himself up by the toe of his boot.

The rooks settled; the rooks rose. The trees which they touched so
capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge their numbers. The tree-tops
sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped
now and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went
the rooks and down again, rising in lesser numbers each time as the
sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent
enough to make the air inside the wood almost dark. The moss was soft;
the tree-trunks spectral. Beyond them lay a silvery meadow. The pampas
grass raised its feathery spears from mounds of green at the end of the