sunshine which is playing on the
leaves of the apple-trees above them. In this density there is always
moisture--always a smell of confined, perpetual shade, of cobwebs,
fallen apples (turning black where they roll on the mouldy sod),
raspberries, and earwigs of the kind which impel one to reach hastily
for more fruit when one has inadvertently swallowed a member of that
insect tribe with the last berry. At every step one's movements keep
flushing the sparrows which always make their home in these depths, and
one hears their fussy chirping and the beating of their tiny, fluttering
wings against the stalks, and catches the low buzzing of a bumble bee
somewhere, and the sound of the gardener's footsteps (it is half-daft
Akim) on the path as he hums his eternal sing-song to himself. Then one
mutters under one's breath, "No! Neither he nor any one else shall
find me here!" yet still one goes on stripping juicy berries from their
conical white pilasters, and cramming them into one's mouth. At length,
one's legs soaked to the knees as one repeats, over and over again, some
rubbish which keeps running in one's head, and one's hands and nether
limbs (despite the protection of one's wet trousers) thoroughly stung
with the nettles, one comes to the conclusion that the sun's rays
are beating too straight upon one's head for eating to be any longer
desirable, and, sinking down into the tangle of greenery, one remains
there--looking and listening, and continuing in mechanical fashion to
strip off one or two of the finer berries and swallow them.

At eleven o'clock--that is to say, when the ladies had taken their
morning tea and settled down to their occupations--I would repair to
the drawing-room. Near the first window, with its unbleached linen blind
lowered to exclude the sunshine, but through the chink of which the sun
kept throwing brilliant circles of light which hurt the eye to look at
them, there would be standing a screen, with flies quietly parading the
whiteness of its covering. Behind it would be seated Mimi, shaking her
head in an irritable manner, and constantly shifting from spot to spot
to avoid the sunshine as at intervals it darted her from somewhere and
laid a streak of flame upon her hand or face. Through the other three
windows the sun would be throwing three squares of light, crossed with
the shadows of the window-frames, and where one of these patches marked
the unstained floor of the room there would be lying,