The Pride of Eve by Warwick Deeping

Three women with dusty shoes and brown faces came along under the Downs to Bignor village. They wore rough brown skirts, white blouses, and straw hats, and each carried a knapsack strapped over her shoulder.

Now Bignor is particularly and remotely beautiful, especially when you have left the flat country behind you and climbed up to the church by the winding lanes. It is pure country, almost uninvaded by modernity, and so old in the midst of its perennial youth that you might hardly wonder at meeting a Roman cohort on the march, or a bevy of bronze-haired British girls laughing and singing between the hedgerows. The village shop with its timber and thatch might be a wood-cut from a romance. The Downs rise up against the blue, and their solemn green slopes, over which the Roman highway climbs, seem to accentuate the sense of silence and of mystery. Great beech woods shut in steep, secret meadows. There are lush valleys where the grass grows tall, and flowers dream in the sunlight.