Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/136

124 “And so’s the pit,” he said. “Look how it heaps together, like something alive almost—a big creature that you don’t know.”

“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps!”

“And all the trucks standing waiting, like a string of beasts to be fed,” he said.

“And very thankful I am they are standing,” she said, “for that means they’ll turn middling time this week.”

“But I like the feel of men on things, while they’re alive. There’s a feel of men about trucks, because they’ve been handled with men’s hands, all of them.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel.

They went along under the trees of the highroad. He was constantly informing her, but she was interested. They passed the end of Nethermere, that was tossing its sunshine like petals lightly in its lap. Then they turned on a private road, and in some trepidation approached a big farm. A dog barked furiously. A woman came out to see.

“Is this the way to Willey Farm?” Mrs. Morel asked. Paul hung behind in terror of being sent back. But the woman was amiable, and directed them. The mother and son went through the wheat and oats, over a little bridge into a wild meadow. Peewits, with their white breasts glistening, wheeled and screamed about them. The lake was still and blue. High overhead a heron floated. Opposite, the wood heaped on the hill, green and still.

“It’s a wild road, mother,” said Paul. “Just like Canada.”

“Isn’t it beautiful!” said Mrs. Morel, looking round.

“See that heron—see—see her legs?”

He directed his mother, what she must see and what not. And she was quite content.

“But now,” she said, “which way? He told me through the wood.”

The wood, fenced and dark, lay on their left.

“I can feel a bit of a path this road,” said Paul. “You’ve got town feet, somehow or other, you have.”

They found a little gate, and soon were in a broad green alley of the wood, with a new thicket of fir and pine on one hand, an old oak glade dipping down on the other. And among the oaks the bluebells stood in pools of azure, under the new green hazels, upon a pale fawn floor of oak-leaves. He found flowers for her.

“Here’s a bit of new-mown hay,” he said; then, again, he