the cracked green door, where they cleaned their wings, and generally
furbished themselves up, as if the warmth was that of a spring day that
promised summer to follow. They were there in considerable numbers,
for just outside in the cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where they
hungrily congregated. Against the white-washed wall of the house there
lay a fat sow, basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams. The
yard, bounded on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the third
by a row of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open. Just outside it stood
a small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish stream
that meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of the yard,
which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway. This farm-road
was partly under water, though not deeply, so that by skirting along its
raised banks it was possible to go dry-shod to the highway underneath
which the stream passed in a brick culvert.

Through the kitchen window, set opposite the door, could be seen a broad
stretch of country of the fenland type, flat and bare, and intersected
with dykes, where sedges stirred slightly in the southerly breeze. Here
and there were pools of overflowed rivulets, and here and there were
plantations of stunted hornbeam, the russet leaves of which still
clung thickly to them. But in the main it was a bare and empty land,
featureless and stolid.

Just below the kitchen window there was a plot of cultivated ground,
thriftily and economically used for the growing of vegetables.
Concession, however, was made to the sense of brightness and beauty, for
on each side of the path leading up to the door ran a row of Michaelmas
daisies, rather battered by the fortnight of rain which had preceded
this day of still warm sun, but struggling bravely to shake off the
effect of the adverse conditions under which they had laboured.

The kitchen itself was extremely clean and orderly. Its flagged floor
was still damp and brown in patches from the washing it had received two
hours before; but the draught between open window and open door was fast
drying it. Down the centre of the room was a deal table without a cloth,
on which were laid some half-dozen places, each marked with a knife and
fork and spoon and a thick glass, ready for the serving of the midday
meal. On the white-washed walls hung two photographs of family groups,
in one of which appeared the father and mother and three little
children,