Even in winter I seldom look forth and see it entirely deserted. Except in school-hours, there are always children playing upon it, and the old men, whose work in the fields is done, hold here daily a sort of informal club whenever the sun shines. But the old women I never see. All their lives long, their activities and interests have been centred in the home, and now they spend the dusk of their days consistently by the firesides. On week-days, the fairest summer weather has no power to tempt them abroad. Up to seventy or so, they can be seen creeping over the green towards the church on Sunday mornings; but it is duty, not desire, that has drawn them from their burrows. For the rest of the week they sit, most of them, stitching tiny scraps of silk and cotton together. It seems to be an indispensable condition of future bliss with all the old women in Sussex, that each should finish a patchwork quilt before she dies. There comes a morning in the year, generally in early February, when the fact that the days are getting longer is suddenly driven in upon your consciousness, as though the change had come about in a single night at the touch of some magician’s wand. A long spell of gloomy weather ends in a crisp, bright dawn. Through the chinks in the blind, the sun casts quivering spots of gold upon the wall. You wake from your dreams, and immediately know that life has become a different thing from that of yesterday. Throwing the casements back, there comes in upon you a flood of new light, new air, new melody. It is barely eight o’clock, and already the sun is high over Windle hill. The thrushes have given up their winter piping, and have begun to sing in the old glad way, linking half a dozen sweet notes in a phrase together, and pouring it out over and over again. The air has the savour of warm earth in it, the scent of green growth; and, looking down at the flower-borders in the garden, you see sheaves of snowdrops breaking up through the soil, and the first crocuses yielding their treasure to the first bees. To-day, though it was only the first of February, just such another morning startled me from sleep, and sent me out of doors tingling to the finger-tips with this new spirit of wonder at a changed order of things. Over Windlecombe, in the level sunlight, half a hundred violet plumes of smoke rose into the calm air. From the smithy came the steady chime of Tom Clemmer’s anvil. The pit-saw was droning in the wheelwright’s yard. Up at High Barn they were threshing wheat, and the sound might have been that from a great cathedral organ, so far off that nothing but the deep tones of the pedal-pipes could reach the ear. But though all these sounds denoted humanity astir, and busy at the day’s task, to the eye there was no sign of any one abroad. I was as much alone as Crusoe on his island, and just as free to wander where I would.