She smote her hands together.
"England!--England!--my own, own country!" She dropped upon the window-seat half laughing, yet the tears in her eyes.

And there, with her face pressed against the glass, she waited while the dawn stole upon the night, while in the park the trees emerged upon the grass white with rime, while on the face of the down thickets and paths became slowly visible, while the first wreaths of smoke began to curl and hover in the frosty air.
Suddenly, on a path which climbed the hill-side till it was lost in the beech wood which crowned the summit, she saw a flock of sheep, and behind them a shepherd boy running from side to side.

At the sight, her eyes kindled again.

"Nothing changes," she thought, "in this country life!" On the morning of Charles I.'s execution--in the winters and springs when Elizabeth was Queen--while Becket lay dead on Canterbury steps--when Harold was on his way to Senlac--that hill, that path were there--sheep were climbing it, and shepherds were herding them.

"It has been so since England began--it will be so when I am dead.