n windows the stark bare ugliness of the metalled line was
forgotten, and the eye rested only on the green solitude that unfolded
itself as the miles went slipping by. Tall grasses and meadow-weeds
stood in deep shocks, field after field, between the leafy boundaries of
hedge or coppice, thrusting themselves higher and higher till they
touched the low sweeping branches of the trees that here and there
overshadowed them. Broad streams, bordered with a heavy fringe of reed
and sedge, went winding away into a green distance where woodland and
meadowland seemed indefinitely prolonged; narrow streamlets, lost to view
in the growth that they fostered, disclosed their presence merely by the
water-weed that showed in a riband of rank verdure threading the mellower
green of the fields. On the stream banks moorhens walked with jerky
confident steps, in the easy boldness of those who had a couple of other
elements at their disposal in an emergency; more timorous partridges
raced away from the apparition of the train, looking all leg and neck,
like little forest elves fleeing from human encounter. And in the
distance, over the tree line, a heron or two flapped with slow measured
wing-beats and an air of being bent on an immeasurably longer journey
than the train that hurtled so frantically along the rails. Now and then
the meadowland changed itself suddenly into orchard, with close-growing
trees already showing the measure of their coming harvest, and then
strawyard and farm buildings would slide into view; heavy dairy cattle,
roan and skewbald and dappled, stood near the gates, drowsily resentful
of insect stings, and bunched-up companies of ducks halted in seeming
irresolution between the charms of the horse-pond and the alluring
neighbourhood of the farm kitchen. Away by the banks of some rushing
mill-stream, in a setting of copse and cornfield, a village might be
guessed at, just a hint of red roof, grey wreathed chimney and old church
tower as seen from the windows of the passing train, and over it all
brooded a happy, settled calm, like the dreaming murmur of a trout-stream
and the far-away cawing of rooks.

It was a land where it seemed as if it must be always summer and
generally afternoon, a land where bees hummed among the wild thyme and in
the flower beds of cottage gardens, where the harvest-mice rustled amid
the corn and nettles, and the mill-race flowed cool and silent through
water-weeds and dark tunnelled sluic