I should be glad if I were not so tired." Hester looked along the white high road which led to Southminster.

In the hot haze she could just see the two ears of the cathedral pricking up through the blue.

Everything was very silent, so silent that she could hear the church clock of Slumberleigh, two miles away, strike twelve.

A whole hour before luncheon! The miller's old white horse, with a dip in his long back and a corresponding curve in his under outline, was standing motionless in the sun, fast asleep, his front legs bent like a sailor's.
A little bunch of red and white cows, knee-deep in the water, were swishing off the flies with the wet tufts of their tails.

Hester watched their every movement.