ugh often enough our life tosses like a fretful
stream among rocky boulders and under troubled skies. God can give and
he can withhold; I do not question his power or his right; I mourn over
the hard gifts from his hand; but when he sends me a sweet gift, let me
try to realise, what I do not doubt, that indeed he wishes me well.

Once in the afternoon we stayed our boat, and I climbed to the top of
the flood-bank and sate looking out over the wide fen; I saw the long
dykes run eastward, the far-off churches, the distant hazy hills; and I
thought of all the troubles that men make for each other, adding so
wantonly to the woes of the world. And I wondered what was this strange
fibre of pain so inwoven in the life of the world, wondered wistfully
and rebelliously, till I felt that I drew nearer in that quiet hour to
the Heart of God. I could not be mistaken. There was peace hidden
there, the peace that to-day brooded over the kindly earth, all
carpeted with delicate green, in the cool water lapping in the reeds,
in the green thorn-bush and the birds' sudden song, even in this
restless heart that would fain find its haven and its home.

LVII

To-day was oppressively hot, brooding, airless; or rather, not so much
without air, as that the air was thick and viscous like honey, without
the thin, fine quality. One drank rather than breathed it. Yet nature
revelled and rejoiced in it with an almost shameless intoxication; the
trees unfolded their leaves and shook themselves out, crumpled by the
belated and chilly spring. The air was full of clouds of hurrying,
dizzy insects, speeding at a furious rate, on no particular errand, but
merely stung with the fierce joy of life and motion. In the road
crawled stout bronze-green beetles, in blind and clumsy haste, pushing
through grass-blades, tumbling over stones, waving feeble legs as they
lay helpless on their backs, with the air of an elderly clergyman
knocked down by an omnibus--and, on recovering their equilibrium,
struggling breathlessly on. The birds gobbled fiercely in all
directions, or sang loud and sweet upon the hedges. I saw half-a-dozen
cuckoos, gliding silvery grey and beating the hedges for nests.
Everything was making the most of life, in a prodigious hurry to live.

Indeed, I was very well content with the world myself as I sauntered
through the lanes. I found a favourite place, an old clunch-quarry, on
the side of a hill, where the white road comes sleepily