Beyond the wall that bordered their house was a little brown path, and down this path, even as he watched, a company of cows were slowly wandering along.
Already they were flapping their ears lazily in anticipation of the flies, and the boy who was driving them was whistling as one only whistles on a summer morning.

He could see the buttercups, too, in the nearest field; they seemed to have sprung to life in the space of a night.

Someone was pulling the rope of a well somewhere and someone else was pouring water out upon some stone court.

Even as he watched, a bee came blundering up to his window, hesitated for a moment, and then went whirring off again, and through all the sun and glitter and the sparkle of the little river there was a scent of pinks, and mignonette, and even, although it could not really be so, of the gorse.

The sky was a pale white blue, so pale that it was scarcely any colour at all and a few puffs of clouds, dead white like the purest smoke, hovered in dancing procession, above the purple wood.