Here a small plot of ground, including the end of the lime-tree avenue, was marked out, a hedge of sweetbriar planted round it, the cottage erected, and a green lawn made before it on the river side, and beds of roses planted at the back. Nothing more--no gravel walks; no startling scarlet geraniums, no lobelias, no cinerarias, no calceolarias, nor other gardeners' abominations to hurt one's eyes and make one's head ache. And no dog, {247} nor cat, nor chick, nor child--only the wild birds to keep one company. They knew how to appreciate its shelter and solitariness; they were all about it, and built their nests amid the great green masses of ivy, honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, rose, and wild clematis which covered the trellised walls and part of the red roof with a twelve years' luxuriant growth. To this delectable spot I returned on 21st July to see the changeful summer of 1900 out, my friends having gone north and left me their cottage for a habitation. "There is the wind on the heath, brother," and one heartily agrees with the half-mythical Petulengro that it is a very good thing; it had, indeed, been blowing off and on in my face for many months past; and from shadeless heaths and windy downs, and last of all, from the intolerable heat and dusty desolation of London in mid-July, it was a delightful change to this valley. During the very hot days that followed it was pleasure enough to sit in the shade of the limes most of the day; there was coolness, silence, melody, fragrance; and, always before me, the sight of that moist green valley, which made one cool simply to look at it, and never wholly lost its novelty. The grass and herbage grow so luxuriantly in the water-meadows that the cows grazing there were half-hidden in their depth; and the green was tinged with the purple of seeding grasses, and red of dock and sorrel, and was everywhere splashed with creamy white of meadow-sweet. The channels of the swift {248} many-channelled river were fringed with the livelier green of sedges and reed-mace, and darkest green of bulrushes, and restful grey of reeds not yet in flower. [Sidenote: Bird visitors]