Yet the house was exquisitely kept, marvellously kept considering the class of servants they were obliged to put up with.  The garden was bright and beautiful with flowers, the lawn smooth; there was an air of refinement everywhere.  So the clergyman slept, and the wife turned again to her sketch of the patent hive, hoping that the golden honey might at last bring some metallic gold.  The waggon rumbled down the road, and Hodge, lying at full length on the top of the load, could just see over the lowest part of the shrubbery, and thought to himself what a jolly life that parson led, sleeping the hot hours away in the shade.

CHAPTER XV

A MODERN COUNTRY CURATE

‘He can’t stroddle thuck puddle, you:  can a’?’

‘He be going to try:  a’ will leave his shoe in it.’

Such were the remarks that passed between two agricultural women who from behind the hedge were watching the approach of the curate along a deep miry lane.  Where they stood the meadow was high above the level of the lane, which was enclosed by steep banks thickly overgrown with bramble, briar, and thorn.  The meadows each side naturally drained into the hollow, which during a storm was filled with a rushing torrent, and even after a period of dry weather was still moist, for the overhanging trees prevented evaporation.  A row of sarsen stones at irregular intervals were intended to afford firm footing to the wayfarer, but they were nothing more than traps for the unwary.  Upon placing the foot on the smooth rounded surface it immediately slipped, and descended at an angle into a watery hole.  The thick, stiff, yellow clay held the water like a basin; the ruts, quite two feet deep, where waggon wheels had been drawn through by main force, were full to the brim.  In summer heats they might have dried, but in November, though fine, they never would.

Yet if the adventurous passenger, after gamely struggling, paused awhile to take breath, and looked up from the mud, the view above was beautiful.  The sun shone, and lit up the oaks, whose every leaf was brown or buff; the gnats played in thousands in the mild air under the branches.  Through the coloured leaves the blue sky was visible, and far ahead a faintly bluish shadow fell athwart the hollow.  There were still blackberries on the bramble, beside which the brown fern filled the open spaces, and behind upon the banks the mosses clothed the ground and the roots of the trees with a deep green.  Two or more fieldfares were watching in an elm some distance down; the flock to which they belonged was feeding, partly in the meadow and partly in the hedge.  Every now and then the larks flew over, uttering their call-note.  Behind a bunch of rushes a young rabbit crouched in the ditch on the earth thrown out from the hole hard by, doubtful in his mind whether to stay there or to enter the burrow.