“Ah! That was a fine invention, surely?” “There’s some believes in them. But if they folk weren’t doin’ everything and goin’ everywhere at once, there’d be no need for them rampagin’ motors.” “Have you ever been in one yourself?” His eyes began to twinkle mockingly. “I’d like to get one here on a snowy winter’s day, when ye’ve to find your way by sound and smell; there’s things up here they wouldn’t make so free with. They say from London ye can get to anywhere. But there’s things no man can ride away from. Downs ’ll be left when they’re all gone.... Never been off the Downs meself.” “Don’t you ever feel you’d like to go?” “There isn’t not hardly one as knows what these Downs are. I see the young men growin’ up, but they won’t stay on ’em; I see folk comin’ down, same as yourself, to look at ’em.” “What _are_ they, then--these Downs?” His little eyes, that saw so vastly better than my eyes, deepened in his walnut-coloured face. Fixed on those grey-green Downs, that reigned serene above the country spread below in all its little fields, and woods, and villages, they answered for him. It was long before he spoke. “Healthiest spot in England!... Talkin’ you was of progress; but look at bacon--four times the price now that ever it was when I were young. And families--thirteen we had, my missus and meself; nowadays if they have three or four it’s as much as ever they’ll put up with. The country’s changed.” “Does that surprise you? When you came up here this morning the sun was just behind that clump of beech--it’s travelled on since then.” He looked at it. “There’s no puttin’ of it back, I guess, if that’s your meaning? It were risin’ then, an’ now it’s gone past noon.” “Joshua made the sun stand still; it was a great achievement!” “May well say that; won’t never be done again, I’m thinkin’. And as to knowin’ o’ the time o’ day, them ewes they know it better than ever humans do; at tew o’clock exact you’ll see them comin’ out again to feed.” “Ah! well--I must be getting on. Good-bye!” His little eyes began to twinkle with a sort of friendly mockery. “Ye’re like the country, all for movin’ on your way! Well, keep on, along the tops--ye can’t make no mistake!” He gave me his old gnarled hand, whose finger-tips were so strangely warped. Then, leaning on his stick, he fixed his eyes upon the beech grove, where his ewes were lying in the cool. Beyond him in the sun the hazy line of dust trailed across the grey-green Downs, and on the rising breeze came the far-off music of the cars. HOLIDAY X HOLIDAY The curtain whose colour changes from dawn to noon, from night to dawn--the curtain which never lifts, is fastened to the dark horizon.