and
Mrs. Morel, picking up a saucepan from the hearth, accidentally knocked
Annie on the head, whereupon the girl began to whine, and Morel to shout
at her. In the midst of this pandemonium, William looked up at the big
glazed text over the mantelpiece and read distinctly:

"God Bless Our Home!"

Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up, rushed at
him, boxed his ears, saying:

"What are YOU putting in for?"

And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over her cheeks, while
William kicked the stool he had been sitting on, and Morel growled:

"I canna see what there is so much to laugh at."

One evening, directly after the parson's visit, feeling unable to bear
herself after another display from her husband, she took Annie and the
baby and went out. Morel had kicked William, and the mother would never
forgive him.

She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the
cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe, evening light,
whispering with the distant mill-race. She sat on a seat under the
alders in the cricket-ground, and fronted the evening. Before her, level
and solid, spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of
light. Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion. Many rooks,
high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven sky. They stooped in
a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing, wheeling,
like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump that made a dark
boss among the pasture.

A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could hear the chock
of the ball, and the voices of men suddenly roused; could see the white
forms of men shifting silently over the green, upon which already the
under shadows were smouldering. Away at the grange, one side of the
haystacks was lit up, the other sides blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves
rocked small across the melting yellow light.

The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire were
blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from the
glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead, while the western
space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there, leaving the
bell cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across the field stood
fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment. A few shocks of corn in
a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive; she imagined them bowing;
perhaps her son would be a Joseph. In the e