Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/89

 the burning rays of the sun. Above the dam, however, the river was full from bank to bank, a broad sheet of water, across which pleasant, wooded hills, dotted here and there with wind-mills, siloes, and farmhouses, presented themselves against the turquoise dome of the sky. The near bank was shaded by maples and willows, while the other side of the winding, dusty road was occupied by small farms with modest market-gardens, fields of cabbages, musk-melons, beets, and turnips. The doorways and yards of the cottages where the gardeners lived were in great disorder; rusting implements, stray laths and boards, disused wheel-barrows, lay about on the samel, cracked clay. Here and there on rotting steps, beneath blistered doors, a mongrel pup or a mangy cat slumbered, while chickens and geese wandered about disconsolate and unfed. Sometimes, a few sun-flowers raised their warlike shields above their browning stalks and, occasionally, morning-glories, purple, pink, and white, clambered bravely towards the cottage roofs. A few birds were abroad: blue-birds, resembling nothing quite so much as miniature aldermen, perched on telegraph wires; meadowlarks now and again swept down from the sky; the procacious chirrup of the chickadee sounded; and, in the distance, the melancholy calling of the mourning dove mingled harmoniously with the soft lowing of unseen cattle and the monotonous drone of the cicada.