_England, My England_


He was working on the edge of the common, beyond the small brook that ran
in the dip at the bottom of the garden, carrying the garden path in
continuation from the plank bridge on to the common. He had cut the rough
turf and bracken, leaving the grey, dryish soil bare. But he was worried
because he could not get the path straight, there was a pleat between his
brows. He had set up his sticks, and taken the sights between the big
pine trees, but for some reason everything seemed wrong. He looked again,
straining his keen blue eyes, that had a touch of the Viking in them,
through the shadowy pine trees as through a doorway, at the green-grassed
garden-path rising from the shadow of alders by the log bridge up to the
sunlit flowers. Tall white and purple columbines, and the butt-end of the
old Hampshire cottage that crouched near the earth amid flowers,
blossoming in the bit of shaggy wildness round about.

There was a sound of children's voices calling and talking: high,
childish, girlish voices, slightly didactic and tinged with domineering:
'If you don't come quick, nurse, I shall run out there to where there are
snakes.' And nobody had the _sangfroid_ to reply: 'Run then, little
fool.' It was always, 'No, darling. Very well, darling. In a moment,
darling. Darling, you _must_ be patient.'

His heart was hard with disillusion: a continual gnawing and resistance.
But he worked on. What was there to do but submit!