Women of the Country THE ROADMENDER SERIES _Uniform with this Volume_ The Roadmender. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS. The Gathering of Brother Hilarius. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS. The Grey Brethren. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS. A Modern Mystic's Way. (Dedicated to Michael Fairless.) Magic Casements. By ARTHUR S. CRIPPS. Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci, as recorded in his Note-Books. Edited by EDWARD MCCURDY. The Sea Charm of Venice. By STOPFORD A. BROOKE. Longings. By W.D. MCKAY. From the Forest. By W. SCOTT PALMER. Pilgrim Man. By W. SCOTT PALMER. Winter and Spring. By W. SCOTT PALMER. Michael Fairless: Life and Writings. By W. SCOTT PALMER and A.M. HAGGARD. Vagrom Men. By A.T. STORY. Light and Twilight. By EDWARD THOMAS. Rest and Unrest. By EDWARD THOMAS. Rose Acre Papers: including Horæ Solitaræ. By EDWARD THOMAS. [Illustration] Women of the Country By Gertrude Bone With Frontispiece by Muirhead Bone London Duckworth & Co. Henrietta Street, W.C. _Published 1913_ WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY CHAPTER I When I was a child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat sands. The only beautiful thing in the place--a town of no distinction--were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember them at intervals, as one recalls things seen passing in a train through a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a child with a child's imagination, standing on those wet sands, looking out over their purple immensity to the glittering line of the tide on the horizon, and to see again the sun in such a wide heaven that it seemed to have the world to itself, and to watch the changes in the sky as it sank, drawing with it the light. These great sands were dangerous at times, shifting in whirling and irresistible rushes of water, and changing the course of the channel, which was unaltered by the tide and which always lay out a gleaming artery from the almost invisible sea.