In the high raftered kitchen our
midday meal was already cooking; the little cobbled court was piled
high with luggage. In the field beyond the house the sanitars had
pitched their tents.
I walked out into the little garden--a charming place with yew hedges,
a lichen-covered well and old thick apple-trees, and here I found an
old man in a broad-brimmed straw hat tending the bees. The hives were
open and he was working with a knife whilst the bees hung in a
trembling hovering cloud about him. I spoke to him but he paid no
attention to me at all. I watched him then spoke again; he
straightened himself then looked at me for a moment with eyes full of
scorn. Words of fury, of abuse perhaps, seemed to tremble on his lips,
then shaking his head he turned his back upon me and continued his
work. Behind us I could hear the soldiers breaking the garden-fence to
make stakes for their tents.
Here we were for a fortnight and it was strange to me, in the days of
stress and excitement that followed, to look back to that fortnight
and remember that we had, so many of us, been restless and
discontented at the quiet of it.
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