Winter would soon be near enough to stretch out a long forefinger once more, and touch with the first frosty shiver some little child that loved summer, and shrunk from the cold.
One evening in early autumn, when the sun, almost on the edge of the horizon, was shining right in at the end of one of the principal streets, filling its whole width with its glory of molten roses, all the shopkeepers were standing in their doors.

Little groups of country people, bearing a curious relation to their own legs, were going in various directions across the square.

Loud laughter, very much like animal noises, now and then invaded the ear; but the sound only rippled the wide lake of the silence.

The air was perfumed with the scent of peat fires and the burning of weeds and potato-tops.

There was no fountain to complete the harmony, but the intermittent gushes from the spout of the great pump in the centre of the square were no bad substitute.