And Fortune Favoured Her, All Things Conspiring To Keep Me Content To
Walk In That Path Which I Had So
Readily, so lightly, promised to keep:
for the work to be done was bread and cheese to me, and in
A sense to
her, and had to be done, and there was nothing to distract attention.
It was quiet in my chosen cottage, in the low-ceilinged room where I
usually sat: outside, the walls were covered with ivy which made it
like a lonely lodge in a wood; and when I opened my small outward-
opening latticed window there was no sound except the sighing of the
wind in the old yew tree growing beside and against the wall, and at
intervals the chirruping of a pair of sparrows that flew up from time
to time from the road with long straws in their bills. They were
building a nest beneath my window - possibly it was the first nest made
that year in all this country.
All the day long it was quiet; and when, tired of work, I went out and
away from the village across the wide vacant fields, there was nothing
to attract the eye. The deadly frost which had held us for long weeks
in its grip had gone, for it was now drawing to the end of March, but
winter was still in the air and in the earth. Day after day a dull
cloud was over all the sky and the wind blew cold from the north-east.
The aspect of the country, as far as one could see in that level plain,
was wintry and colourless.
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