Lucy would often compare with it
the eager docility of those last weeks at Beechmark.
* * * * *
Helena's walk had taken her through the dripping oak-wood and over the
crest of the hill to a ravine beyond, where the river, swollen now by the
abundant rains which had made an end of weeks of drought, ran, noisily
full, between two steep banks of mossy crag. From the crag, oaks hung
over the water, at fantastic angles, holding on, as it seemed, by one
foot and springing from the rock itself; while delicate rock plants, and
fern fringed every ledge down to the water. A seat on the twisted roots
of an overhanging oak, from which, to either side, a little green path,
as though marked for pacing, ran along the stream, was one of her
favourite haunts. From up-stream a mountain peak now kerchiefed in wisps
of sunlit cloud peered in upon her. Above it, a lake of purest blue from
which the wind, which had brought them, was now chasing the clouds; and
everywhere the glory of the returning sun, striking the oaks to gold, and
flinging a chequer of light on the green floor of the wood.
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