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The white tails of rabbits bobbed in and out of the hedgerows; stoats crossed the road in front of the children's feet—swift, silent, stealthy creatures which made them shudder; there were squirrels in the oak-trees, and [Pg 23] once they even saw a fox curled up asleep in the ditch beneath thick overhanging ivy. Bands of little blue butterflies flitted here and there or poised themselves with quivering wings on the long grass bents; bees hummed in the white clover blooms, and over all a deep silence brooded. It seemed as though the road had been made ages before, then forgotten.

The children were allowed to run freely on the grass verges, as wide as a small meadow in places. 'Keep to the grinsard,' their mother would call. 'Don't go on the road. Keep to the grinsard!' and it was many years before Laura realized that that name for the grass verges, in general use there, was a worn survival of the old English 'greensward'.

It was no hardship to her to be obliged to keep to the greensward, for flowers strange to the hamlet soil flourished there, eyebright and harebell, sunset-coloured patches of lady's-glove, and succory with vivid blue flowers and stems like black wire.