This hollow ran
between undulations of fallow and meadow; no harrow clinked as yet; only
the cows stood here and there above the dry patches on the dewy fields
where their bodies had lain in sleep. She saw their soft eyes and smelled
the savor of them. Presently the cart-ruts disappeared in fine grass all
bediamonded, knobbed with heather, sprouting rusty-red, and sprinkled with
tussocks of coarser grass, whereon green blades sprang up above the dead
ones, where they struggled, matted and bleached and sere. Rabbits flashed
here and there, the white under-side of their little scuts twinkling
through the gorse; and then the birds woke up; a thrush sang low, sleepy
notes from the heart of a whitethorn; yellowhammers piped their mournful
calls from the furze. On Joan's left hand there now rose a clump of
wind-worn beech-trees, their brown spikes breaking to green, even where
dead red leaves still clung to the parent branches. Beneath them ran a
hedge of earth above a deep pool or two, very clear and fringed with young
rushes, upright and triumphant above the old dead ones. Everywhere Joan saw
Life trampling and leaping, growing and laughing over the ruins of things
that had lived and died. It saddened her a little. Did Nature forget so
soon? Then she told herself that kind Nature had loved them and gloried in
them too; and now she would presently bury all her dead children in
beautiful graves of new green.
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