COUNTRY LIFE
As I write, the rain is being driven by the wind, beating through the hedge, driving leaves from the sycamores and the elms and screening everything beyond the trees so that the distant farm and the footpath I know so well are both out of sight and I am left with a landscape that is strange and unfamiliar because the back- ground has gone. A sparrow is sheltering in the hedge, hopping now and then to better cover, but the wind bends the rain until its spray is forced under the bushes, and places that usually give shelter are streaming with water. Two lambs are bleating at the top of the garden, forlorn on the hill with only the cover of the elderberry in the hedge. They stand looking at the cold, wet curtain of a tower of green leaves that is half a rambling hop bush and half bindweed with its white trumpets beaten almost out of sight. No one walks the hill this afternoon and the road is deserted. The slates of the village roofs are clean and bright and the gutters run with fragments of leaf carried along in the current like ships in a fast-flowing river. Perhaps the sky will clear before evening, as it often does, but just now the clouds are low and while the trees nod in the rainstorm a broken chimney cowl on a nearby house spins frantically and squeals prbtest against the gusts of wind. .
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