At last the darkness has shut down upon an afternoon spent with Bettesworth in such peace that I can hardly remember its equal since I was a little child. On Sundays, when the midday meal was over and the seniors were asleep, there used to be a cool back-room where the world was wont to grow mysteriously quiet for us children. The outlook, I remember, was upon a narrow yard between old out-buildings, which admitted only a chastened light into our room, where the maid-servant would be “keeping us quiet” with noiseless games, or with hushed tales of which no impression remains save that they had a fascination that imparted strangeness even to the kettle's confidential talk of approaching tea-time.

It is years since I thought of all these things: but somehow the forgotten atmosphere of them came stealthily back, while Bettesworth and I worked together two hours ago. The March afternoon had grown very still, under level cloud which sank gradually until the distance was absorbed by it and the opposite slope of the valley, near as it was, loomed palely indistinct behind a grey, wet mist. Larks still sang, but with just that unaggressive persistence characteristic of a kettle on the hearth: and except for this, there was no sound but of our own subdued voices.

We were at work close by the house, patching with odd turfs a little lawn shut in by shrubs and low trees—whose budding life seemed magically suspended by the chill of the ever-thickening mist.