e Heath

Thursday, the thirty-first of August, was one of a series of days during
which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were treats;
when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called "earthquakes" by
apprehensive children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels
of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted the air, the
earth, and every drop of water that was to be found.

In Mrs. Yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged
by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even
stiff cabbages were limp by noon.

It was about eleven o'clock on this day that Mrs. Yeobright started
across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting
reconciled with him and Eustacia, in conformity with her words to the
reddleman. She had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat
of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found that this
was not to be done. The sun had branded the whole heath with its mark,
even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness under the dry
blazes of the few preceding days. Every valley was filled with air like
that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-courses,
which formed summer paths, had undergone a species of incineration since
the drought had set in.

In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Yeobright would have found no inconvenience
in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey
a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the
third mile she wished that she had hired Fairway to drive her a portion
at least of the distance. But from the point at which she had arrived it
was as easy to reach Clym's house as to get home again. So she went on,
the air around her pulsating silently, and oppressing the earth with
lassitude. She looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine
hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a
metallic violet.

Occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds of ephemerons
were passing their time in mad carousal, some in the air, some on the
hot ground and vegetation, some in the tepid and stringy water of a
nearly dried pool. All the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous
mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could
be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment. Being a
woman not disinclined to philosophize she