Michael by E.F. Benson

Michael was sitting in the kitchen of a French farm-house just outside the village of Laires, some three miles behind the English front. The kitchen door was open, and on the flagged floor was cast an oblong of primrose-coloured November sunshine, warm and pleasant, so that the bluebottle flies buzzed hopefully about it, settling occasionally on the cracked green door, where they cleaned their wings, and generally furbished themselves up, as if the warmth was that of a spring day that promised summer to follow. They were there in considerable numbers, for just outside in the cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where they hungrily congregated. Against the white-washed wall of the house there lay a fat sow, basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams. The yard, bounded on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the third by a row of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open.

Just outside it stood a small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish stream that meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of the yard, which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway. This farm-road was partly under water, though not deeply, so that by skirting along its raised banks it was possible to go dry-shod to the highway underneath which the stream passed in a brick culvert.