unwearied step, that firm uprightness, and measured yet lazy gait, but
most of all the power which they possessed, though they did not exercise
it intentionally, of being always in the sunlight, the air, and abroad
upon the earth. If so they chose, and without stress or strain, they
could see the sunrise, they could be with him as it were--unwearied and
without distress--the livelong day; they could stay on while the moon
rose over the corn, and till the silent stars at silent midnight shone in
the cool summer night, and on and on till the cock crew and the faint
dawn appeared. The whole time in the open air, resting at mid-day under
the elms with the ripple of heat flowing through the shadow; at midnight
between the ripe corn and the hawthorn hedge on the white wild camomile
and the poppy pale in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful
heaven.

Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to be obtained from
constant presence with the sunlight and the stars. I thought of them all
day, and envied them (as they envied me), and in the evening I found them
again. It was growing dark, and the shadow took away something of the
coarseness of the group outside one of the village "pothouses." Green
foliage overhung them and the men with whom they were drinking; the white
pipes, the blue smoke, the flash of a match, the red sign which had so
often swung to and fro in the gales now still in the summer eve, the rude
seats and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound about the edge with hay, the
white dogs creeping from knee to knee, some such touches gave an interest
to the scene. But a quarrel had begun; the men swore, but the women did
worse. It is impossible to give a hint of the language they used,
especially the elder of the three whose hollow face was blackened by time
and exposure. The two golden-brown girls were so heavily intoxicated they
could but stagger to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and one held a
quart from which, as she moved, she spilled the ale.