A Wiltshire Village

"What is your nearest village?" I asked of a labourer I met on the road
one bleak day in early spring, after a great frost: for I had walked
far enough and was cold and tired, and it seemed to me that it would be
well to find shelter for the night and a place to settle down in for a
season.

"Burbage," he answered, pointing the way to it.

And when I came to it, and walked slowly and thoughtfully the entire
length of its one long street or road, my sister said to me:

"Yet another old ancient village!" and then, with a slight tremor in
her voice, "And you are going to stay in it!"

"Yes," I replied, in a tone of studied indifference: but as to whether
it was ancient or not I could not say;--I had never heard its name
before, and knew nothing about it: doubtless it was characteristic--
"That weary word," she murmured.

--But it was neither strikingly picturesque, nor quaint, nor did I wish
it were either one or the other, nor anything else attractive or
remarkable, since I sought only for a quiet spot where my brain might
think the thoughts and my hand do the work that occupied me. A village
remote, rustic, commonplace, that would make no impression on my
preoccupied mind and leave no lasting image, nor anything but a faint
and fading memory.

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom--
And conquered her scruples and gloom.

And fortune favoured her, all things conspiring to keep me content to
walk in that path which I had so readily, so lightly, promised to keep:
for the work to be done was bread and cheese to me, and in a sense to
her, and had to be done, and there was nothing to distract attention.

It was quiet in my chosen cottage, in the low-ceilinged room where I
usually sat: outside, the walls were covered with ivy which made it
like a lonely lodge in a wood; and when I opened my small outward-
opening latticed window there was no sound except the sighing of the
wind in the old yew tree growing beside and against the wall, and at
intervals the chirruping of a pair of sparrows that flew up from time
to time from the road with long straws in their bills. They were
building a nest beneath my window--possibly it was the first nest made
that year in all this country.

All the day long it was quiet; and when, tired of work, I went out and
away from the village across the wide vacant fields, there was nothing
to attract the eye. The deadly frost which had held us for long weeks
in its grip had gone, for it was now drawing to the end of March, but
winter was still in the air and in the earth. Day after day a dull
cloud was over all the sky and the wind blew cold from the