So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little girl of about
seven came down from a cottage, and to cool her feet waded out into
the middle, and there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone,
looking down on her own wavering image broken by a hundred hurrying
wavelets and ripples. This small maidie, holding up her short, shabby
frock with her wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face as
she bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and their
flickering reflection beneath, made a pretty picture. Like the wagtails,
she looked in harmony with her surroundings.
So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen, so many
the adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamlet
beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that it
would take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at the
end I found that Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression,
and was remembered with most pleasure. It was more to me than Winsford,
that fragrant, cool, grey and green village, the home of immemorial
peace, second to no English village in beauty; with its hoary church
tower, its great trees, its old stone, thatched cottages draped in ivy
and vine, its soothing sound of running waters. Exeter itself did not
impress me so strongly, in spite of its cathedral. The village of Exford
printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there been filled
with wonder and delight at the sight of a face exceeding in loveliness
all the faces seen in that West Country--a rarest human gem, which had
the power of imparting to its setting something of its own wonderful
lustre. The type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differences
in some respects, else it could not have been so perfect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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