Pity for the Farmer Leaving these solitary pleasures, and talking
with the local farmers, I hear a chorus of woe. One tells me that the high wind a few nights ago lifted and capsized a house containing day-old chicks. Twenty pounds went west in as many seconds. Ewes and lambs have been dying like flies. One can'hear the poor creatures coughing through the night, wet and frozen. I watched an old sheep this morning, crippled by rheumatism, suckling three lambs and at the same time standing defiantly on guard against my innocent corgi, whose only interest is rabbits and cats. The mother hobbled a few feet, then stopped while her family took another tug. So she progressed, gradually moving her precious convoy away from what she believed to be the menace of my approach with so dangerous a scout. She stood above a bank where the primroses were in full bloom: but they had not their usual thick, buttery colour. The day and night rain had soaked their petals, leaving them like smutched moth-wings, semi-transparent.
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