She had
concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood
laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods.
I was
sure, by her face, that she had already recommended her spirit most
religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself for the worst. And so,
to reassure her, I uncovered and besought her, after a very staid
fashion, to put me on my way to Great Missenden. Her voice
trembled a little, to be sure, but I think her mind was set at
rest; and she told me, very explicitly, to follow the path until I
came to the end of the wood, and then I should see the village
below me in the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courtesies,
the little old maid and I went on our respective ways.
Nor had she misled me. Great Missenden was close at hand, as she
had said, in the trough of a gentle valley, with many great elms
about it. The smoke from its chimneys went up pleasantly in the
afternoon sunshine. The sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled
the neighbouring fields and hung about the quaint street corners.
A little above, the church sits well back on its haunches against
the hillside - an attitude for a church, you know, that makes it
look as if it could be ever so much higher if it liked; and the
trees grew about it thickly, so as to make a density of shade in
the churchyard.
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