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Birds sang; a shallow river rippled; breezes ruffled green grain into long, silvery waves across the valley; sunshine fell on quiet streets, on scented gardens unsoiled by war, on groves and meadows, and on the stone-edged brink of brimming pools where washerwomen knelt among the wild flowers, splashing amid floating pyramids of snowy suds.
There is a very wide street, unpaved, but with a broad smooth gravelled way, slightly sloping down towards the little clean stone-edged gutters that border the carriage road along the centre, which is planted on each side with limes cut into arches.
There was a stone-edged roadway along the latter, where the canal barges might receive and deliver traffic in the most convenient manner. As the wharfage boundary was the property of the trustees of the Bridgewater Canal, it was necessary to agree with them as to the rates to be charged for the requisite accommodation.
His dreamy eyes met the gaze of the Tracer, unseeing; he rested his sunburned face between both palms, speaking in the same vague monotone: "Everywhere dust, ashes, decay, the death of life, the utter annihilation of the living save only the sparkle of reborn waters slowly covering the baked bed of the stone-edged pool strange, luminous water, lacking the vital sky tint, enameled with a film of dust, yet, for all that, quickening with imprisoned brilliancy like an opal.
They were following along the side of a steep ridge overlooking the river, when Claire suddenly stopped him and gave a cry of delight. Near them a small, furry animal, caught in a tangled mass of wirelike creepers, was struggling to free itself. He killed the creature with his stone-edged tool, and after barbecuing it on the end of a stick, they ate it ravenously.
Walks of hardened earth, to which green mould clung in patches, wound through the grounds and threaded the three little groves of oak, chestnut, and locust, in the centres of which, set in circular lawns, were the three axes of interest the stone-edged fish-pond, the spouting fountain, and the ancient ship's figurehead a wind-worn, sea-battered mermaid cuddling a tiny, finny sea-child between breast and lips.
On his bicycle on the smooth-shaven lawn was Dick, wheeling slowly in and out among the stone-edged flower-beds, an apricot in each broad palm, while he discoursed in a dispassionate manner to the two excited little boys who were making futile rushes for the apricots. The governess and Rachel were looking on. Rachel had arrived at Westhope the day before from Southminster.
Slap-slap! went her paddle; the sud-spume flew like shreds of cotton; iridescent foam set with bubbles swirled in the stone-edged basin, constantly swept away down stream by the current, constantly renewed as she soaped and scrubbed, kneeling there in the meadow grass above the pool.
Presently, as though moved by a common impulse, they turned together, slowly traversed the terrace and the long pergola all crimson and white with bougainvillia and jasmine, and entered the jungle road beyond the courts where carved seats of coquina glimmered at intervals along the avenue of oaks and palmettos and where stone-edged pools reflected the golden green dusk of the semi-tropical foliage above.
So all though February work was rushed forward; and March found the sunken garden in bloom, stone-edged pools full of lotus and lilies, orange trees blossoming in a magnificent sweep around the balustrade of the terrace, and, beyond, the graceful stone bridge, passable but not quite completed.
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