The reason was
that the house was between us. By some mysterious process I had been
discharged into the back garden. I still had the milking-stool in my
hand, but the cow no longer troubled me. Let her see if she could
wake Veronica by merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than
I had ever been able to do.
I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book. I headed the page:
"Sunrise in July: observations and emotions," and I wrote down at
once, lest I should forget it, that towards three o'clock a faint
light is discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the
time goes on.
It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a novel of
the realistic school that had been greatly praised for its actuality.
There is a demand in some quarters for this class of observation. I
likewise made a note that the pigeon and the corncrake appear to be
among the earliest of Nature's children to welcome the coming day;
and added that the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by
anyone caring to rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before
the dawn. That was all I could think of just then. As regards
emotions, I did not seem to have any.
I lit a pipe and waited for the sun. The sky in front of me was
tinged with a faint pink. Every moment it flushed a deeper red. I
maintain that anyone, not an expert, would have said that was the
portion of the horizon on which to keep one's eye.
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