Two bays of this stood
open down to the ground. Looking out, beyond the rich brown of the
newly-turned earth in the flower-beds, the lawn stretched away--a dim
greyish green, under the long shadows cast by the hollies masking the
wall on the left, and glittering, powdered by myriads of scintillating
dewdrops, where the early sunshine slanted down on it from between their
stiff pinnacles and sharply serrated crests.
In the shrubberies robins sang, shrilly sweet. A murmur of waves,
breaking at the back of the Bar, hung in the chill, moist, windless air.
Presently a handbarrow rumbled and creaked, as West--the head gardener,
last surviving relic of Thomas Clarkson Verity's reign--wheeled it from
beneath the ilex trees towards the battery, leaving dark smudgy tracks
upon the spangled turf.
Arrived at his objective, the old gardener, with most admired
deliberation, loaded down long-handled birch-broom, rake and hoe; and
applied himself to mysterious peckings and sweeping of the gravel around
the wooden carriages of the little cannon and black pyramid of
ball.
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