The flat fields glared green yellow, blueyellow,
red yellow, then blue again. The pompous popular tune brayed and blared. All this
Miss La Trobe knew, but refused to be mixed upin it. Cut offfrom their bodies, their
eyes smiled, their bodiless eyes, at theireyes in the glass. She makes everyone do
something, said Isabella.
There, couched in the grass, curled in anolive
green ring, was a snake. Call for the robin redbreast and the wren. Ebury had
forbiddenFanny to act because of the nettle-rash.
But the pen sheheld thus on the little table
absolutely refused to move. Streatfield,she paced between the birch
trees.
She shifted and looked over her
rightshoulder.
Ball lived with another man while her husband was
in thetrenches. The glare and the stare and the beat of the tom-tom, hemeant. Chuff,
chuff, chuff, went the machine like a corn-cutter on a hotday. Dukes, priests,
shepherds, pilgrims andserving men took hands and danced.
Then at last the machine ground out a
tune!
Swithin put her hands to her hair, for the breeze
had ruffledit. She makes everyone do something, said Isabella. Their narrow black
roofs were laid together like the blocks of afloor. Miss La Trobe in her rage
stubbed hertoe against a root.
Swallows were busy withstraw in pockets of earth in
the rafters.
There was nothing for the audience to do.
Streatfield,she paced between the birch trees.
Her bare brown arms wentnervously to her
head.
The snake was unable to swallow, the toad was
unable todie. The wind howls and the bitternshrieks, she replied. It would take till
midnight unless they skipped. Then up he jerked it again on tohis knee.
Were they about to act a play in the presence of
Queen Elizabeth? There was another name inthe village for nettle-rash.