She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds were being cast.
Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves down on it in a row to roost.
"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they are a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough.

If it were going to be stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk.

The weather is almost all they have to think of, isn't it, Mr.Winterborne?
and so they must be lighter-hearted than we." "I dare say they are," said Winterborne.
Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's to ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence.
Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees.

Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down the path with the young man.
Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his invitation was to a gathering of any importance.

So he put it in the mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business, the day after to-morrow; and Mrs.and Miss Melbury, if they have nothing more pressing to do ?" Melbury would give no answer at once.