CHAPTER XXVII
JANUARY SUNSHINE
It is a quiet valley in which moist fields of meadow, mowing grass, mangold, and stubble are bounded from one another by deep ditches and good hedges of maple, thorn and hazel, with here and there an oak, or by oak woods that rise above an undergrowth of grey ash. Every half mile there is a tiled farmhouse with low-pitched roof and low, square windows, their frames painted white, and between them rose trees climbing; in the gardens of most, two plots of lawn are surrounded by rich dark borders and divided by a path; and each has a careless shrubbery of Portuguese laurel, lilac, syringa and elder, hardly cut off from the orchard that grows as it will above grey rank grass, and close by at least two ponds. One little stream winds through the valley and gains at times much glory of speed and sound and foam from the rain off the hillside. A few grey, smooth roads cross the valley.
It is January, and the predominant grass is green and shining in the sun. The rusty oaks and the farmhouse roofs glow. The bare clean hedges glitter with all their stems of olive hazel, silver oak and ash and white thorn, and blackthorn ruddy where the cattle have rubbed. A
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