Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/641

232 it is a very big one; and Buscot is scarcely more than a coppice; but the blue distance between the trunks was very delightful. As to the weather, bearing in mind that things are so much behindhand, it is not bad. To-day has been March all over; rain-showers, hail, wind, dead calm, thunder, finishing with a calm frosty evening sky. The birds are amusing, especially the starlings, whereof there are many: but some damned fool has been bullying our rooks so much that they have only got six nests, so that we haven't got the proper volume of sound from them.

"One grief, the sort of thing that is alwayalways [sic] happening in the spring: there were some beautiful willows at Eaton Hastings which to my certain knowledge had not been polled during the whole 17 years that we have been here; and now the idiot Parson has polled them into wretched stumps. I should like to cut off the beggar's legs and have wooden ones made for him out of the willow timber, the value of which is about 7s. 6d.

"I am so very sorry to hear of poor Kate's misfortune, and am not a little uneasy about it. I didn't see her last Wednesday, though I called. She was poorly then, having had some bad nights with poor dear Charley. It is such a grievous business altogether that, rightly or wrongly, I try not to think of it too much lest I should give way altogether, and make an end of what small use there may be in my life."

The following beautiful description of a visit to western Wiltshire on business of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings is also from a letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones written on the 13th of May:

"Thursday afternoon was grey and stormy: the lightning twinkled over the White Horse as we passed