and in the path was his papa, who had just shot a cruel crow. The crow
had been eating the birds' eggs, and picking the little birds to pieces.



GOLDEN-BROWN


Three fruit-pickers--women--were the first people I met near the village
(in Kent). They were clad in "rags and jags," and the face of the eldest
was in "jags" also. It was torn and scarred by time and weather;
wrinkled, and in a manner twisted like the fantastic turns of a gnarled
tree-trunk, hollow and decayed. Through these jags and tearings of
weather, wind, and work, the nakedness of the countenance--the barren
framework--was visible; the cheekbones like knuckles, the chin of brown
stoneware, the upper-lip smooth, and without the short groove which
should appear between lip and nostrils. Black shadows dwelt in the
hollows of the cheeks and temples, and there was a blackness about the
eyes. This blackness gathers in the faces of the old who have been much
exposed to the sun, the fibres of the skin are scorched and half-charred,
like a stick thrust in the fire, and withdrawn before the flames seize
it. Beside her were two young women, both in the freshness of youth and
health. Their faces glowed with a golden-brown, and so great is the
effect of colour that their plain features were transfigured. The
sunlight under their faces made them beautiful. The summer light had been
absorbed by the skin and now shone forth from it again; as certain
substances exposed to the day absorb light and emit a phosphorescent
gleam in the darkness of night, so the sunlight had been drank up by the
surface of the skin, and emanated from it.