he puppies in the rickyard. (This he did in
the old-fashioned way, with his teeth.) Besides we thought that, if we
waited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'.
We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by the
road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into
town. Some of them had waited like this every market morning for
years. There were fewer on the road than usual, it being near harvest,
when many do not so much care to leave home.

Upon reaching the foot of the Downs, Cicely left the highway and
entered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between banks of
chalk or white rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that the
bed of the pony-trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we went
rather slowly along this awkward place we could see the wild thyme
growing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of the
hill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherds'
timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge, on the short sweet
turf, where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided on
that broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed, and we
raced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Far
below, to the right, stretched wheatfield after wheatfield in a plain
between two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away,
came the shadows of the clouds--then down along the corn towards us.
Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes as we went by; an
old crow--it is always an old crow--rose hastily from behind a fence
of withered thorn; and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fields
beneath, where was a flock of sheep. The breeze at this height made
the sunshine pleasant.

Cicely said that once some snow lingered in the fosse of the
entrenchment we had left behind till the haymaking. There was a
snowstorm late in the spring, and a drift was formed in a hollow at
the bottom of the fosse. The weather continued chilly (sometimes even
in June it is chilly, and the flowers seem out of harmony with the
temperature), and this drift, though of course it was reduced, did not
melt but became consolidated like ice: a part still remained when the
haymaking commenced. The pony now slackened his pace at a sharp
ascent, and as he walked up we could hear the short song of the
grasshoppers. There was a fir copse at the summit through which the
track went; by the gateway as we e