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137
The Solitary Summer
·
Elizabeth Von Arnim
67
The
village
consists
of
one
street
running
parallel
to
the
outer
buildings
of
the
farm,
and
the
cottages
are
one-storied,
each
with
rooms
for
four
families--two
in
front,
looking
on
to
the
wall
of
the
farmyard,
which
is
the
fashionable
side,
and
two
at
the
back,
looking
on
to
nothing
more
exhilarating
than
their
own
pigstyes.
Each
family
has
one
room
and
a
larder
sort
of
place,
and
shares
the
kitchen
with
the
family
on
the
opposite
side
of
the
entrance;
but
the
women
prefer
doing
their
cooking
at
the
grate
in
their
own
room
rather
than
expose
the
contents
of
their
pots
to
the
ill-natured
comments
of
a
neighbour.
On
the
fashionable
side
there
is
a
little
fenced-in
garden
for
every
family,
where
fowls
walk
about
pensively
and
meditate
beneath
the
scarlet-
runners
(for
all
the
world
like
me
in
my
garden),
and
hollyhocks
tower
above
the
drying
linen,
and
fuel,
stolen
from
our
woods,
is
stacked
for
winter
use;
but
on
the
other
side
you
walk
straight
out
of
the
door
on
to
manure
heaps
and
pigs.
The
street
did
not
look
very
inviting
yesterday,
with
a
lowering
sky
above,
and
the
wind
blowing
dust
and
bits
of
straw
and
paper
into
my
face
and
preventing
me
from
seeing
what
I
knew
to
be
there,
a
consoling
glimpse
of
green
fields
and
fir
woods
down
at
the
other
end;
but
I
had
not
been
for
a
long
while--we
have
had
such
a
lovely
summer--and
something
inside
me
had
kept
on
saying
aggressively
all
the
morning,
"Elizabeth,
don't
you
know
you
are
due
in
the
village?
Why
don't
you
go
then?
When
are
you
going?
Don't
you
know
you
ought
to
go?
Don't
you
feel
you
must?
Elizabeth,
pull
yourself
together
and
go"
Strange
effect
of
a
grey
sky
and
a
cool
wind!
For
I
protest
that
if
it
had
been
warm
and
sunny
my
conscience
would
not
have
bothered
about
me
at
all.
We
had
a
short
fight
over
it,
in
which
I
got
all
the
knocks,
as
was
evident
by
the
immediate
swelling
of
the
bump
alluded
to
above,
and
then
I
gave
in,
and
by
two
o'clock
in
the
afternoon
was
lifting
the
latch
of
the
first
door
and
asking
the
woman
who
lived
behind
it
what
she
had
given
the
family
for
dinner.
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