"I'll be expecting you." The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from under the wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick on the petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellen back to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more of it than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was very tired.

It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnic dainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda.

Then as the soft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them both and went early up to bed.
Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elm boughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustling touches.

The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslope of the hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of the alders lift and bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the river damp across the pastures.

All the light reflected from the sky above Bloombury wood was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass of a picture that hung at the foot of Peter's bed.