t of the village
children. On the bank of moor, which forms the foreground, are a few
cows, the carter's dog barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is
feeding another, a gentle white one, which turns its head to her,
expectant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her
blue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with her pail on her
head, evidently the village coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and
pretty striped petticoat under the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer
us, the cowherd, barefooted, stands on a piece of the limestone rock
(for the ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);--whether
boy or girl we are not sure; it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out
bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trowsers on; probably the
first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to keep the sun out of our
eyes when we are looking for strayed cows among the moorland hollows,
and helps us at present to watch (holding the bonnet's edge down) the
quarrel of the vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long
stick, we allow to proceed without any interference. A little to the
right the hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just taken her
apronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thin, and cannot well be
raked up because of the rocks; we must glean it like corn, hence the
smallness of our stack behind the willows, and a woman is pressing a
bundle of it hard together, kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry
it safely to the hay-cart without dropping any. Beyond the village is a
rocky hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone
emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in
russet and mossy mounds against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as
golden as the moss, stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single
cottage just shows its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seaward;
perhaps one of the village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have
built it there, that his mother may first see the sails of his ship
whenever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the
border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand
in long curved lines, slowly; shadows of cloud and gleams of shallow
water on white sand alternating--miles away; but no sail is visible, not
one fisherboat on the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon.
Beyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun,