Close to us here was a wall, with a big, solid Georgian house
peeping over, blinking with its open windows and sun-blinds on to a
smooth, shaded lawn, full of green glooms and leafy shelters. Why
did it all give one such a sense of happiness and peace, even
though one had no share in it, even though one knew that one would
be treated as a rude and illegal intruder if one stepped across and
used it as one's own?
This is a difficult thing to analyse. It all lies in the
imagination; one thinks of a long perspective of sunny afternoons,
of leisurely people sitting out in chairs under the big sycamore,
reading perhaps, or talking quietly, or closing the book to think,
the memory re-telling some old and pretty tale; and then perhaps
some graceful girl comes out of the house with a world of hopes and
innocent desires in her wide-open eyes; or a tall and limber boy
saunters out bare-headed and flannelled, conscious of life and
health, and steps down to the punt that lies swinging at its chain--
one hears it rattle as it is untied and flung into the prow; and
then the dripping pole is plunged and raised, and the punt goes
gliding away, through zones of glimmering light and shadow, to the
bathing-pool.
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