Such A Moment Was Mine, As I Stood Under The Elms Listening To The
Blackbird.
And looking back up the village street I thought of the
woman in the churchyard, her sun-parched eager face, her questioning
eyes and friendly smile:
What was the secret of its attraction? - what
did that face say to me or remind me of? - what did it suggest?
Now it was plain enough. She was still a child at heart, in spite of
those marks of time and toil on her countenance, still full of wonder
and delight at this wonderful world of Chilmorton set amidst its
limestone hills, under the wide blue sky - this poor squalid little
village where I couldn't get a cup of tea!
It was the child surviving in her which had attracted and puzzled me;
it does not often shine through the dulling veil of years so brightly.
And as she now appeared to me as a child in heart I could picture her
as a child in years, in her little cotton frock and thin bare legs, a
sunburnt little girl of eight, with the wide-eyed, eager, half-shy,
half-trustful look, asking you, as the child ever asks, what you
think? - what you feel? It was a wonderful world, and the world was the
village, its streets of gritstone houses, the people living in them,
the comedies and tragedies of their lives and deaths, and burials in
the churchyard with grass and flowers to grow over them by-and-by.
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