No; nothing but long, wild, untutored grass, diversifying the
forms of the mounds it covered,--themselves irregularly shaped,
with no eye to effect; the impressive presence of the old mountain
that all this was a part of being nowhere excluded by disguising
art. Outside were similar slopes and similar grass; and then the
serene impassive sea, visible to a width of half the horizon, and
meeting the eye with the effect of a vast concave, like the
interior of a blue vessel. Detached rocks stood upright afar, a
collar of foam girding their bases, and repeating in its whiteness
the plumage of a countless multitude of gulls that restlessly
hovered about.
'Now, Worm!' said Mr. Swancourt sharply; and Worm started into an
attitude of attention at once to receive orders. Stephen and
himself were then left in possession, and the work went on till
early in the afternoon, when dinner was announced by Unity of the
vicarage kitchen running up the hill without a bonnet.
Elfride did not make her appearance inside the building till late
in the afternoon, and came then by special invitation from Stephen
during dinner. She looked so intensely LIVING and full of
movement as she came into the old silent place, that young Smith's
world began to be lit by 'the purple light' in all its
definiteness. Worm was got rid of by sending him to measure the
height of the tower.
What could she do but come close--so close that a minute arc of
her skirt touched his foot--and asked him how he was getting on
with his sketches, and set herself to learn the principles of
practical mensuration as applied to irregular buildings? Then she
must ascend the pulpit to re-imagine for the hundredth time how it
would seem to be a preacher.
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