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The valley was so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow’s length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week’s November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she proclaimed it aloud. |
This is from “Friendly Brook” in A Diversity of Creatures Two hedgers are trimming a hedge in a Sussex valley. The brook in the valley bottom is rising, and threatens to swamp the hay-rick of a neighbour, Jim Wickenden, but Jim had refused to shift the stack a yard. The brook had been a good friend to him in drowning a blackmailer who had been bleeding him for money. If it pleased it to ‘take a snatch at my hay’, Jim wouldn’t ‘withstand her’. . |
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