Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/114

 first, she thought, and she followed it to where, among rough bushes, saplings, and spits of sand, it ran out into the river. A little hut stood here with one tall tree growing beside it. A tethered goat was cropping at the thickets and Jill was enchanted by the sight of a family of grey wagtails—pale grey above, daffodil yellow beneath—disporting themselves with aerial flittings and jocund balancings in the shallows of the sandy shore. Then she walked back along the stream that divided her from the island, seeking a bridge over that. But there was none. To reach the island one had to round the projection of the promontory and return to the causeway, from where she could see Buissac, only half a mile away, lying tranquilly in the sunlight. Once reached, the island was a lovely spot indeed. It was lifted high above the meadow-land; high above the river. All the ground was covered with dense, bright grass that was soft under one's feet and among the straightly planted poplar groves one saw on every side the blue glimmer of water. The three white cows were picketed there, moving mildly forward, side by side. Jill went to the shore to look across the broad, swift current to the opposite bank of the Dordogne. Two waggons, drawn by cream-coloured oxen, were moving slowly along the road, piled with faggots, and a motor-car, small, vivid, glittering, looked like a dragon-fly skimming along the surface of the water. A row of motionless men, legs dangling, fished from a low wharf, and the voices of women kneeling at the water's edge to beat and knead their