Page 193 - sons-and-lovers

into a wild meadow. Peewits, with their white breasts glis-
tening, wheeled and screamed about them. The lake was
still and blue. High overhead a heron floated. Opposite, the
wood heaped on the hill, green and still.
‘It’s a wild road, mother,’ said Paul. ‘Just like Canada.’
‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ said Mrs. Morel, looking round.
‘See that heron—see—see her legs?’
He directed his mother, what she must see and what not.
And she was quite content.
‘But now,’ she said, ‘which way? He told me through the
wood.’
The wood, fenced and dark, lay on their left.
‘I can feel a bit of a path this road,’ said Paul. ‘You’ve got
town feet, somehow or other, you have.’
They found a little gate, and soon were in a broad green
alley of the wood, with a new thicket of fir and pine on one
hand, an old oak glade dipping down on the other. And
among the oaks the bluebells stood in pools of azure, under
the new green hazels, upon a pale fawn floor of oak-leaves.
He found flowers for her.
‘Here’s a bit of new-mown hay,’ he said; then, again, he
brought her forget-me-nots. And, again, his heart hurt with
love, seeing her hand, used with work, holding the little
bunch of flowers he gave her. She was perfectly happy.
But at the end of the riding was a fence to climb. Paul was
over in a second.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’
‘No, go away. I will do it in my own way.’
He stood below with his hands up ready to help her. She

1 Sons and Lovers