I sit down and stare along
the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds
floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey-green waves
as they break and slosh upon the stones.
I think of Catherine and Annie, and I remark that the breakwaters are
formed of hop-poles, twined together and clasped with red-rusted iron
girdles; the wood has been washed by the tides white and clean as bones.
I wonder whether I shall ask Annie to be my wife, and I wonder also
whence came those--literally--millions of wine bottle corks that strew
the beach to my right. From a wreck? from old fishing nets? or merely
from the natural consumption of beer at the building of the breakwater?
Coming back to Down End, I find a travelling threshing machine at work
in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a
good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn
up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in
serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those
who work her, old Anderson, son Robert--a dreadful lout he is too, quite
unlike his sister--various other louts of the same calibre, the two
little boys, very much in everyone's way, and Mrs.
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