For indeed there is no piece of colour of the
same extent in nature, that will so flatter and satisfy the lust of a
man's eyes; and to come upon so many of them, after these acres of
stone-coloured heavens and russet woods, and grey-brown ploughlands
and white roads, was like going three whole days' journey to the
southward, or a month back into the summer.
I was sorry to leave PEACOCK FARM - for so the place is called, after
the name of its splendid pensioners - and go forwards again in the
quiet woods. It began to grow both damp and dusk under the beeches;
and as the day declined the colour faded out of the foliage; and
shadow, without form and void, took the place of all the fine tracery
of leaves and delicate gradations of living green that had before
accompanied my walk. I had been sorry to leave PEACOCK FARM, but I
was not sorry to find myself once more in the open road, under a pale
and somewhat troubled-looking evening sky, and put my best foot
foremost for the inn at Wendover.
Wendover, in itself, is a straggling, purposeless sort of place.
Everybody seems to have had his own opinion as to how the street
should go; or rather, every now and then a man seems to have arisen
with a new idea on the subject, and led away a little sect of
neighbours to join in his heresy.
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